Trend-following hedge funds have piled into global equities as market volatility has fallen and stocks climb on investors’ hopes that interest rate rises are close to their peak.
Commodity trading advisers — hedge funds that rely on pattern-detecting algorithms and statistical models to direct trading across markets — have in recent weeks increased their exposure to equities to the highest level since before the pandemic, according to Deutsche Bank.
CTAs managing hundreds of billions of dollars in assets now have net long futures positions on Wall Street’s S&P 500, Europe’s Euro Stoxx 50, London’s FTSE 100 and Japan’s Nikkei 225, among other indices, Deutsche said.