Two of the highest-profile hedge fund firms have shuffled their biggest bets. But, according to their first-quarter stock holdings reports, Bridgewater Associates made major changes to its portfolio, while Renaissance Technologies more or less tinkered.
Bridgewater pared its largest long position by more than half, initiated one new position, and more than doubled other significant holdings.
Bridgewater — founded by Ray Dalio, who no longer runs the firm — manages about $92 billion, down from the peak of $150 billion, when it was the largest hedge fund firm.
In the first quarter, its flagship hedge fund, Pure Alpha, gained 9.9 percent after rising 11.3 percent in 2024, its best performance in years. At the end of the first quarter, the U.S. stock portfolio was valued at nearly $22 billion, or a little less than one-quarter of the firm’s total capital, according to regulatory filings.
Exchange-traded funds are an important part of Bridgewater’s equity strategy. ETFs accounted for the three largest long positions and four of the six biggest positions overall in the first quarter.
The largest long position remains a sizable stake in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF, a big bet on the direction of the broad stock market. However, in the first quarter, Bridgewater cut its position by more than 50 percent.
At the same time, it slightly increased its stake in its No. 2 long position, the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF, and its No. 3 long position, the iShares Core MSCI Emerging Markets ETF. As a result, Bridgewater still has a sizable bet on the overall stock market rising.
In addition, it established a new large position in the SPDR Gold Shares ETF, a big bet on the direction of the price of physical gold. It is now the firm’s sixth-largest long position in U.S. stocks.
The hedge fund firm also scooped up more than 5.4 million shares of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding in the first quarter, boosting its total stake to about 5.66 million shares. And Bridgewater more than doubled its position in two stocks that then wound up among its top-ten holdings: online travel agent Booking Holdings and Salesforce.
At the same time, it scaled back large positions in two Magnificent Seven stocks, cutting its stake in Alphabet by about 15 percent and its stake in chip giant Nvidia by more than 18 percent.
Renaissance Technologies, founded by the late Jim Simons, is off to a strong start this year. Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund was up 12.73 percent and Renaissance Institutional Diversified Alpha Fund rose 16.75 percent through April, per a hedge fund database.
Renaissance did not shake up its top holdings in the first quarter, but tweaked them.
The firm reduced its stake in its largest U.S. equity long, Palantir Technologies, by more than 28 percent. Palantir accounted for about 2 percent of U.S. common stock assets at the end of the quarter.
Renaissance’s most significant long bet in the first three months was boosting the stake in Robinhood Markets by more than 37 percent. It became the firm’s fourth-largest U.S. common stock long position. Robinhood continues to push deeper into the crypto markets, especially after announcing on Tuesday that it had agreed to acquire Canada-based WonderFi Technologies.
In the first quarter, Renaissance stood pat with its Nos. 2 and 3 long positions, network infrastructure company VeriSign and drug company Corcept Therapeutics.
