How hedge funds performed in September

• Bridgewater’s Pure Alpha fund surges 26% year-to-date
• Marshall Wace’s Eureka Fund up 8.04% year-to-date
• Systematic stock trading funds rise over 13% in 2025, Goldman Sachs reports

LONDON, October 3 – Hedge funds returned 1.3% in September, with managers in Europe, Asia and the Middle East outperforming their North American rivals, according to a JPMorgan client note on Thursday, seen by Reuters on Friday.

Global equities in September climbed 3.4% (.MIWD00000PUS), opens new tab. An index of developed market sovereign bonds rose around 0.7% last month.

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The JPMorgan note, which tracks hedge fund trading, said positioning in U.S. stocks was only “somewhat bullish,” indicating an expectation for equities to rise.

Crowding in the biggest “Magnificent Seven” tech stocks, which include Apple, Amazon and Nvidia, remained near historical highs, the note said.

In Europe, stock-pickers tended to bet that equities would rise. But multi-strategy funds – those that trade many strategies – and quantitative funds, which use algorithms, tended to wager that stock prices would decline.

In Asia, where stocks rose, hedge funds had more bets on a decline than a rise, the note said.

The $92.1 billion Bridgewater, opens new tab notched a 6% monthly gain in its Pure Alpha fund to September 29. From the beginning of the year until September 29, Bridgewater’s Pure Alpha, Asia Total Return, All Weather, and China Total Return funds posted returns of 26.2%, 32.5%, 15.3%, and 28.4%, respectively.

British hedge fund Marshall Wace posted September returns of 1.32%, up 8.04% for the year so far in its Eureka Fund, a source said. The $79 billion hedge fund’s Market Neutral Tops fund returned 0.45% in September and was up 13.66% for the year, the source added.

Systematic stock-trading hedge funds, such as Marshall Wace, are up over 13% for 2025 so far, Goldman Sachs said in a note to clients.

Multi-strategy funds remained largely flat on the month, apart from the $28 billion Balyasny Asset Management, which added 1.3% in September to its annual return so far this year of 10%, another source with knowledge of the matter said.

September hedge fund results

Reporting by Nell Mackenzie in London, Anirban Sen in New York and Summer Zhen in Hongk Kong; Editing by Amanda Cooper and Barbara Lewis

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Anirban Sen is the Editor in Charge of Market Structure at Reuters in New York where he leads the news agency’s coverage of stock exchanges, and market-making firms including Jane Street and Citadel Securities. Previously Anirban was M&A Editor at Reuters, leading a team of reporters who regularly broke market-moving news about the biggest deals in corporate America. Some of his scoops have included Mars’ $36 billion deal for snack maker Kellanova, design software firm Synopsys’ $35 billion deal for Ansys, and buyout firm GTCR’s $18.5 billion deal for merchant services provider Worldpay. In 2023, Anirban was part of a Reuters team that won a Gerald Loeb Award for the agency’s coverage of the collapse of FTX. After starting with Reuters in Bangalore in 2009, he left in 2013 to work as a technology deals reporter in several leading business news outlets in India, including The Economic Times and Mint. Anirban rejoined Reuters in 2019 as Editor in Charge, Finance, to lead a team of reporters in India, covering everything from investment banking to venture capital.