The Top 20 Hedge Funds of 2025

Hedge funds had a great year in 2025. But not everyone won. Here’s what worked best.

1. Macro Strategies Dominated the Leaderboard

Macro strategies benefited from 2025’s environment of policy shifts, rate volatility, and geopolitical uncertainty, outperforming more traditional equity-focused approaches.

Even the weakest fund on the list delivered equity-like returns, highlighting how favorable the backdrop was for professional capital in 2025.

Multistrategy approaches showed tight clustering. Risk control worked—but limited upside compared to more concentrated macro or event-driven bets.

The best hedge funds of 2025 benefited from a strong macro environment, but returns were not evenly distributed.

Strategy choice, positioning, and execution created large gaps—even among top managers.

A data-based comparison of two famous market strategies.

Inverse Cramer, which bets against Jim Cramer’s stock recommendations, and Pelosi trade copying, which mirrors publicly disclosed trades by members of Congress, most notably Nancy Pelosi’s household.

Both approaches gained attention due to perceived informational edges—but their results in 2025 diverged meaningfully.

Inverse Cramer delivered more than double the return of the Pelosi strategy over the same period.

Higher returns from Inverse Cramer came with higher short-term risk.

2025’s volatility favored contrarian strategies.

Cramer’s outperformance in 2025 came with higher volatility and drawdown risk, reinforcing a key lesson: strategy success is regime-dependent, not .

U.S. Housing Affordability Has Never Been Worse (Data Since 1890)

The U.S. housing market is at its least affordable point in recorded history.

Inflation-adjusted home prices have set consecutive records over the last three years, surpassing every prior cycle—including the 2006 housing bubble.

This matters because housing affordability isn’t about nominal prices.

It’s about real prices, income, and financing costs.

With mortgage rates near multi-decade highs and wages lagging home prices, buyers are stretched further than ever.

There is no historical precedent for today’s combination of real prices and borrowing costs.

And the market knows it: transaction volumes are falling, inventory is rising, and buyer sentiment is weakening.

Housing bubbles don’t burst because people say they will.

They burst when affordability breaks.

IPOs in 2026: What the Data Actually Says

From 2000 to 2026, more than 6,600 companies went public, with activity clustering around strong bull markets.

The peak came in 2021 with 1,035 IPOs, while downturns like 2008 saw just 62.

IPO volume is highly cyclical, rising when liquidity is abundant and risk appetite is high.

But performance after listing tells a different story.

Post-IPO data shows extreme dispersion. The top 10% of IPOs generated outsized gains, compounding several hundred percent over three years.

Meanwhile, the bottom half destroyed capital, with many stocks down 50–100% within the same window.

The median IPO has historically underperformed broad market indices after the initial excitement fades.

This pattern reflects a structural reality: IPOs often come to market when conditions are favorable for sellers, not buyers.

Every major iShares stock ETF, organized by how investors actually build portfolios.

Core & Broad Market ETFs are your foundation — funds like total market and S&P 500 exposure that do the heavy lifting over decades.

U.S. Size & Style ETFs let investors tilt intentionally:

Income, ESG & Factor ETFs are for strategy:

International & Real Assets round it out: