Hazeltree: Global hedge funds experienced volatility in January
13 February 2026 Global
Image: Giggles/stock.adobe.com
Global hedge funds experienced volatility in January amid geopolitical headlines, policy shifts, and energy market swings, according to Hazeltree鈥檚 January 2026 Crowdness Report.
The monthly report provides a look back at hedge fund long and short crowdedness across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC, based on Hazeltree鈥檚 analysis of anonymised data from more than 600 funds, covering approximately 16,000 securities.
It includes the ten most crowded regional long and short positions, broken out by large, mid, and small-cap categories.
Hazeltree defines the crowdedness score as a relative metric that normalises the number of funds in the Hazeltree鈥檚 community longing or shorting a given security within a pre-defined group (by region and market cap) compared to its peers.
Tim Smith, managing director, data insights, at Hazeltree says: 鈥淛anuary began with an unusually volatile start to the year for global hedge fund crowdedness.
鈥淚n our North America large-cap long crowdedness data, Meta caught our attention: our data insights indicators detected a sentiment shift in November as its long鈥憈o鈥憇hort ratio bottomed, then steadily improved in December and January, finishing as the fourth most crowded name.
鈥淥n the large-cap short side, Kimberly鈥慍lark showed roughly a 2:1 ratio of short to long fund counts from our hedge fund community and is currently ranked as the fifth most crowded short.鈥�
In North America, Occidental Petroleum was the most crowded security in the large-cap short crowdedness category.
Comstock Resources and Terawulf were the top of the mid-cap category, and Allegiant Travel, Marriott Vacations Worldwide, Ziff Davis, Penn Entertainment, and QuidelOrtho came top of the small-cap short crowdedness category.
In EMEA, Wise, H&M, and Kuehne + Nagel came top of the large-cap short crowdedness category.
In APAC鈥檚 large-cap short crowdedness category, SoftBank came top, and for the small-cap, Silex Systems, Meiko Electronics, and Supply Network came top.
The monthly report provides a look back at hedge fund long and short crowdedness across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC, based on Hazeltree鈥檚 analysis of anonymised data from more than 600 funds, covering approximately 16,000 securities.
It includes the ten most crowded regional long and short positions, broken out by large, mid, and small-cap categories.
Hazeltree defines the crowdedness score as a relative metric that normalises the number of funds in the Hazeltree鈥檚 community longing or shorting a given security within a pre-defined group (by region and market cap) compared to its peers.
Tim Smith, managing director, data insights, at Hazeltree says: 鈥淛anuary began with an unusually volatile start to the year for global hedge fund crowdedness.
鈥淚n our North America large-cap long crowdedness data, Meta caught our attention: our data insights indicators detected a sentiment shift in November as its long鈥憈o鈥憇hort ratio bottomed, then steadily improved in December and January, finishing as the fourth most crowded name.
鈥淥n the large-cap short side, Kimberly鈥慍lark showed roughly a 2:1 ratio of short to long fund counts from our hedge fund community and is currently ranked as the fifth most crowded short.鈥�
In North America, Occidental Petroleum was the most crowded security in the large-cap short crowdedness category.
Comstock Resources and Terawulf were the top of the mid-cap category, and Allegiant Travel, Marriott Vacations Worldwide, Ziff Davis, Penn Entertainment, and QuidelOrtho came top of the small-cap short crowdedness category.
In EMEA, Wise, H&M, and Kuehne + Nagel came top of the large-cap short crowdedness category.
In APAC鈥檚 large-cap short crowdedness category, SoftBank came top, and for the small-cap, Silex Systems, Meiko Electronics, and Supply Network came top.
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