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Alternative Markets Update – End August 2026

31/8/2026

July marked the first monthly decline of the year for hedge funds, partly reversing a strong first half. The HFRI Fund Weighted Composite fell 1.1% in the month, leaving it up 6.25% YTD, with only around 45% of funds posting positive returns. The decline was led by the strategies that had driven the first-half rally: the HFRI Technology Index dropped 7.0%, its steepest monthly fall since 2008, as the AI-related momentum that had powered technology-focused managers through the first half reversed sharply. Relative value was the only major group to gain, up 0.24% for the month and 3.99% YTD, as fixed income and rate-sensitive strategies benefited from the move in yields. Overall we believe it illustrates the ill effect of the concentration of the industry’s first-half gain, and how quickly a shift in AI sentiment can ripple through performance.

Dispersion across strategies was the defining feature of the month, as it has been of the year. Equity hedge fell 1.85% in July but remains up 7.44% YTD, and event-driven declined 1.77% to sit at 5.2% YTD. Macro was broadly flat, down 0.34%, as gains in commodity strategies, where the HFRI Macro: Commodity Index rose 2.2%, offset losses in systematic trend-following. The gap between winners and losers has been unusually wide all year: in the second quarter, the top decile of funds returned an average of 36.4% while the bottom decile lost 8.2%, a spread of 44.6 percentage points against 30.1 points in the first quarter. For allocators, the message is that strategy and manager selection, rather than broad industry exposure, has accounted for most of the return outcome in 2026.

Alternative Markets Update – Mid AUGUST 2026

17/8/2026

The hedge fund industry recorded its strongest first half in five years. The HFRI Fund Weighted Composite gained 7.6% over H1 2026, having advanced 6.55% in Q2, the best quarter for the industry since Q4 2020. Industry capital reached a record $5.6tn at the end of June following a $409.3bn increase over the second quarter, the largest quarterly rise on record and the fifteenth consecutive quarterly expansion. Our mandated funds returned 0.37% across the SMC Cross-Asset Index over the same period, with assets across our mandates at $48.8bn at the end of June. Dispersion across strategies was wide. As shown in Graph 1, our equity composite returned 9.79% against 8.67% for its benchmark, credit 3.75% against 2.64% and multi-strategy 9.80% against 8.94%, while tactical trading returned -10.15% against 7.06% and cryptocurrency -26.12% against -18.44%. Three of the five composites finished ahead of benchmark, with the Cross-Asset return held back by tactical trading and cryptocurrency rather than by the core equity and credit books. The same pattern is visible across the industry. Equity hedge led the major groups with a 9.6% gain over H1 and technology- focused managers returned 19%, outperforming the Nasdaq by around 600bps. Macro gave back ground in June, with the HFRI Macro Index down 1.5% and systematic diversified CTAs off 1.4%, as the retreat in energy prices removed the directional tailwind that had supported the strategy earlier in the year. Strategy selection rather than broad industry exposure accounted for most of the return outcome over the first half, and the unresolved geopolitical and rates backdrop suggests that continues into H2.

Alternative Markets Update – End July 2026

30/7/2026

The hedge fund industry has just recorded the strongest period of asset growth in its history. Total global industry capital rose by $409.3bn in Q2, the largest quarterly increase on record, taking AUM to a new high of $5.6tn and marking the fifteenth consecutive quarterly expansion. The scale of the move is best understood in context: industry capital only crossed the $5tn threshold for the first time at the end of 2025, at $5.15tn, and stood at $5.22tn at the end of Q1, so Q2 represents a step-change rather than a continuation of incremental drift. As shown in Graph 1, the trajectory over the past four quarters has been consistently upward, driven by a combination of performance-based gains and sustained net inflows. HFR’s president Kenneth Heinz described the current environment as unequivocally the strongest for hedge fund capital growth since industry inception. Allocations remain heavily concentrated in the largest managers, with firms running over $5bn receiving an estimated $39.0bn of net inflows in Q1 against $4.0bn for mid-sized firms and $1.5bn for those below $1bn.

Alternative Markets Update – Mid July 2026

17/7/2026

Equity markets have held close to record levels through the first half of July, though the tone has become more cautious as the renewed flare-up in the Middle East reintroduced energy risk into an otherwise resilient tape. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq remain up around 11% and 16% YTD respectively, supported by continued strength in large-cap technology and the AI complex, but the sharp move higher in oil prices in the second week of July prompted a modest risk-off rotation, with energy-sensitive sectors outperforming and rate-sensitive growth names giving back some of their recent gains. The market’s willingness to look through geopolitical escalation has been a defining feature of 2026, but that patience is increasingly contingent on oil not sustaining a move back toward wartime highs.

On the IPO front, the SpaceX listing has continued to mature as a public benchmark. The stock was admitted to the Nasdaq-100 on 7 July under the exchange’s fast-entry rule, less than a month after its debut, triggering an estimated $4.3bn of passive buying from index-tracking funds. The episode has become a live test of how quickly mega-cap listings are absorbed into passive portfolios, and it sets a template for the Anthropic and OpenAI listings expected later in the year. For investors, the more important read-through is structural: the speed of index inclusion means passive flows now amplify the post-IPO price action of these names, adding a technical dimension to what were already volatile debuts.

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