With big macroeconomic events ranging from elections to central bank moves stirring the market, the biggest investors on Wall Street have been shifting their portfolios and playing offense heading into 2025. The hedge fund community, as a whole, nailed the election trade by piling into cyclical stocks that were thought to benefit from the rotation that took place after President-elect Donald Trump swept to victory last month, according to Goldman Sachs. The investment bank released its findings after analyzing the holdings of 697 hedge funds with $3 trillion in gross equity positions. Specifically, professional traders raised their exposure to financial stocks to the largest overweight in at least 15 years, according to Goldman’s data. That’s proven a winning trade as bank stocks have rallied dramatically since Election Day, partly on hopes that the new adminustration will roll back a series of government regulations. Stocks in the financial sector that saw the largest increase in the number of hedge fund owners in the third quarter included insurers Everest Group and W R Berkley Corp. , stock exchange operator Intercontinental Exchange as well as financial firms Raymond James Financial and Rithm Capital Corp , according to Goldman. Daniel Sundheim’s D1 Capital added positions in Bank of America in the third quarter, making it one of the fund’s top positions. Ole Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global owned US Bancorp , Visa and Progressive as its biggest holdings. Billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller built a sizable position in regional banks and made clinical genetic testing company Natera his biggest position last quarter — two bets that have been rallying since Trump’s election.. Utility plays Power producers were another group of stocks that gained popularity among stock-picking hedge funds anticipating Trump’s return to the White House. The energy names may benefit from the president elect’s promised rollback of environmental regulations and his encouragement of the crypto industry and its enormous energy demands. VerityData looked at the top 10 holdings of “fundamental” hedge funds, or managers that disclosed 10 to 300 holdings worth $100 million or more. It found that Constellation Energy saw the biggest increase in hedge fund high-conviction ownership, including buying from Coatue Management and Lone Pine Capital. CEG YTD mountain Constellation Energy Energy names Vistra Energy and Talen Energy also gained newfound love among these…
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