Hedge Funds Chased Tech, Semis in April
elevated volatility, and hedge funds continued to cluster around high-quality growth names, according to the latest Hazeltree Crowding Report. The firm, a provider of treasury and liquidity management tools for alternative managers, said portfolios remain concentrated in companies with strong profitability, high return on equity and leading margins.
Hazeltree’s analysis showed hedge fund positioning closely tracked the strength in technology benchmarks, particularly within the so‑called Magnificent Seven. Meta Platforms and Amazon.com each saw more than a 5% month‑over‑month increase in the number of funds holding long positions, while Nvidia experienced a 4.5% decline in long‑fund participation. Tesla, meanwhile, reflected an overall bearish stance based on the ratio of long to short fund counts.
Semiconductors drew intense interest. The PHLX Semiconductor Sector Index posted its strongest monthly gain since 1994, jumping 40%. Within that universe, Hazeltree found overall sentiment broadly stable year to date, with the share of constituents showing net long positioning recovering to 57% in April after dipping to 53% in February and March. Sentiment toward Astera Labs and Coherent shifted from long‑biased to short‑biased, while crowding on the long side remained most pronounced in Nvidia, followed by Broadcom and Lam Research. ON Semiconductor was the most crowded short, ahead of Microchip Technology and Monolithic Power Systems.
“Despite the continued Middle East conflict and the rising cost of oil, global markets snapped back in April with a risk-on approach, particularly in the tech and semiconductor sectors, as hedge funds in our community data set followed,” said Tim Smith, managing director, Data Insights at Hazeltree. “We noted in our analysis of the semiconductor sector that hedge fund positioning in Nvidia remained long-biased with softening at the margin, while long fund participation declined by approximately 4.5% month-over-month, while short fund participation increased meaningfully in April.”
The report draws on anonymized data from more than 600 hedge funds and roughly 16,000 securities on Hazeltree’s securities‑finance platform, highlighting the ten most crowded long and short positions across the Americas, EMEA and APAC by market cap.