Hedge Fund Momentum Trade Blows Up With Losses Worst Since 2009
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Market neutral quants see largest quarterly drop since 2012
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Bets against low-momentum backfire as most-shorted names rise
One of the most popular hedge fund trades just hit a wall.
An investment approach that profits from the divergent paths of high- and low- momentum stocks over time, a strategy that had one of its biggest gains on record in 2015, seized up in the last three months, posting the worst quarter in six years. The plunge helped zap returns among a big category of quantitative hedge funds, the so-called market neutral group, whose year-to-date decline of 2.3 percent is the largest since 2012.
While the tactic may be esoteric, the force that pummeled it is not: a growing revulsion among investors to shares whose main claim to fame in the past few years was that they kept going up. Anyone pursuing the strategy got into particular trouble shorting companies with the lowest price momentum, a section of the market that ended up being the quarter’s biggest winner…
Hedge Fund Momentum Trade Blows Up With Losses Worst Since 2009
