November 2021 Was Worst Month For Hedge Funds Since March 2020 – But Context Matters And Losses Were Comparatively Muted; Social Distance Winners And Losers Fall Together
Q3 2021 hedge fund letters, conferences and more
PivotalPath has released their monthly report, the Pivotal Point Of View, which measures performance among more than 2,400 institutionally-relevant hedge funds, as well as 40+ different hedge fund strategies and $2.5T in total industry assets. What were some of the biggest takeaways?
As can likely imagine, November was a tough month with few places to hide. The Composite Index declined 1.7% in November but remains 6.7% positive for the year. Importantly, while this was the worst month for the index since March 2020, these losses are nowhere near the severity seen at the start of the pandemic or the Great Financial Crisis.
Highlights
- PivotalPath’s Social Distance Winners Basket (think Peloton, Zoom, Activision) and Social Distance Losers Basket (think Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Cinemark) were both down significantly, falling 13.9% and 11.2% respectively.
- Since March of 2020, the battle between these opposing factors have helped capture the markets’ sentiment on Covid. A significant sell-off in both suggests even greater issues at play.
- The PivotalPath Equity Sector Indices struggled the most, led by Healthcare (-6.2%), Financials (-3.0%), and TMT (-2.8%).
- Multi-Strat as represented by the PivotalPath Multi-Strategy Index generated a rare loss of 0.8% on the month though still +8.5% YTD.
