Investors look beyond US hedge funds for the first time since 2023, Barclays says, as many plan to cut exposure to US-based hedge funds by around 5 percent, according to a Barclays survey of investors managing $7.8 trillion in assets.
The survey of 342 investors took place over November and December and showed rising interest in managers based in Asia and Europe, Barclays said, with talk of a "Sell America" trade simmering since US President Donald Trump introduced Liberation Day levies in April.
Barclays reported that interest in Asia-Pacific hedge funds more than doubled from the lows of last year and that US interest in European-based hedge funds more than doubled, while European investors said they were eight percent more willing to allocate to European managers than a year earlier.
Market Shifts Fees Returns And Strategies
Barclays said hedge funds remain expensive, with average management and performance fees peaking for traditional products, even as pass-through cost structures decreased, and investors' share of gross returns rose from around 47 percent to 56 percent.
The bank added that overall hedge fund returns grew by about five percent this year, and that the industry expanded by just over a fifth between 2023 and 2025, marking its largest two-year jump since the period around 2011 to 2013.
Barclays' data showed multi-manager firms still dominate, with multi-manager assets under management growing at a constant annual rate of 17 percent since 2017 to roughly $435 billion last year, although multi-managers were not the top strategy pick for investors.
The survey found that macro strategies and systematic stock trading attracted the highest net allocators in 2025, while Equity Market Neutral was the most favoured strategy for 2026, followed by Quant Multi-Strategy, which Barclays said had been the most sought-after since 2020.
The findings and figures were reported by Reuters, with reporting by Nell Mackenzie and editing by Amanda Cooper and Mark Porter, citing Barclays' survey results.
