Alternative Market Briefing

Crowdedness data may signal rising volatility across global hedge funds

Thursday, February 12, 2026

Matthias Knab, Opalesque for New Managers:

Global hedge funds experienced volatility in January amid geopolitical headlines, policy shifts, and energy market swings, according to Hazeltree, a leading provider of integrated treasury and liquidity management solutions for alternative asset managers.

Key Takeaways

The most crowded sectors consistently fell into three sectors across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC:

Information Technology – North America (Software & Services) and APAC (Technology Hardware & Equipment)
Industrials – EMEA (Capital Goods) and APAC (Capital Goods)
Financials – North America (Banks) and EMEA (Banks)

In every region, these sectors appear at or near the top of both long and short crowdedness rankings, consistent with December 2025. This could potentially be seen as managers simultaneously expressing conviction and hedging within the same sector.

The monthly report provides a look back at hedge fund long and short crowdedness across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC, based on Hazeltree’s analysis of anonymized data from approximately 16,000 securities on its proprietary securities-finance platform, representing more than ......................

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