The RBC Hedge Fund Handbook – No Shelter from the Storm, Yet
By Lori Calvasina
Published May 23, 2022 | 7 min listen
In this week’s podcast, we run through our takeaways from the first quarter 13fs of more than 300 of the biggest US-based hedge funds, which came out last week. Three big things you need to know: First, our review of the performance trends and relative valuations of the most popular S&P 500 stocks in hedge funds suggests to us that the pandemic froth is out of these names, an important milestone, but on the valuation side there may still be some room to fall. Second, we are keeping a close eye on the performance trends of the most popular hedge fund stocks relative to the broader market as another gauge of institutional investor sentiment. Third, in terms of sector positioning, what jumps out to us the most is that while hedge fund positioning in Consumer Staples remained underweight relative to the Russell 3000 as 1Q22 came to an end, the underweight has narrowed and is back to its 3Q16 high, which we view as another cautious data point on the sector.
Lori Calvasina
Managing Director & Head of U.S. Equity Strategy, RBC Capital Markets
Lori Calvasina joined RBC Capital Markets as Head of U.S. Equity Strategy in 2017 as a Managing Director. Having spent nearly two decades as an equity strategist at major investment banks, Lori is an expert on the US stock market, and regularly represents RBC in the financial media on Bloomberg and CNBC. Prior to joining RBC, Lori was a senior equity strategist at Credit Suisse from 2010 to 2017, covering Small/Mid Cap Strategy from 2010-2014 and both Small/Mid Cap and US Equity Strategy from 2015-2017. She spent the first ten years of her career at Citi in a variety of roles including lead Small/Mid Cap Strategist from 2007-2010. In both 2008 and 2009 Lori was ranked #2 in the Small Companies category in the Institutional Investor All America Research team poll. Lori is a graduate of the University of Virginia and its selective Government & Foreign Affairs’ Honors Program. In 2019, she was named to Crains New York’s list of Notable Women in Finance.
Consumer StaplesHedge FundsLori CalvasinaMarkets in MotionRBC PodcastStock Market