Greek ‘No’ Meets Month of Hedge Fund Caution as Shorts Jump
ByHedge funds riding equities toward their best year since the financial crisis turned cautious in the runup to Greece’s “no” vote Sunday.
Rising short sales sent a gauge of manager bullishness compiled by Evercore ISI down 1.3 percentage points over the past month, putting the measure of short and long exposure close to neutral. Hedge funds are up 2.6 percent in 2015, beating the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index’s 0.9 percent gain and leaving managers up on the gauge for the first time since 2008.
While buying stocks and reducing shorts in the U.S. made sense after a six-year bull market added $17 trillion to share values, trying to game the outcome in Greece has been another matter. Greeks voted against accepting further austerity in exchange for a new European bailout, increasing the chances of the country having to abandon the euro…