Hedge fund winners and losers emerge in brutal tech-driven sell-off

cnbc.com:

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A wide divergence of performance has formed in the hedge fund industry amid the stock rout on Wall Street this year.

Tech-focused investors like Brad Gerstner and Tiger Global are getting crushed as growth stocks became the epicenter of the market carnage in the face of rising rates. Meanwhile, some value, macro and international oriented players are reaping sizable gains despite the market bloodbath.

Macro funds were a standout winner in April with a 5% surge, extending its 2020 rally to 15.5% thanks to strong performance in commodity, fundamental discretionary and trend-following strategies, according to data from HFR. On the flip side, technology-heavy hedge funds were among the biggest losers last month with a near 5% loss overall, HFR data said.

«If you owned growth stocks this year — like we did at Altimeter — you got your face ripped off,» Altimeter Capital's CEO Gerstner said in a Twitter post Thursday. «As a hedge fund we expect to lose less than the indexes on the way down — this year we have lost more… Markets moved fast- we moved too slow.»

Altimeter's four biggest holdings — Snowflake, Meta, Microsoft and Uber — are all down from 20% to as much as 60% year to date. The technology sector, especially unprofitable firms and richly valued software names, have been hit the hardest as of late. The Nasdaq Composite slid more than 13% in April, dropping almost 30% from its all-time high.

Chase Coleman's growth-focused flagship fund at Tiger Global tumbled 15% last month, pushing its 2022 rout to 44% and wiping out nearly all of its gains since 2019, according to Bloomberg News. Its biggest holdings as of the end of 2021 included JD.com, Microsoft and Sea