ven leadership has been: the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index had its best quarter on record even as the Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF fell 9% in June. That kind of split matters because long-short funds tend to do best when individual stocks move differently from each other, letting skill show up in picking relative winners and losers. But Goldman also flagged the downside of that same churn: short positions can get squeezed and fast reversals can whip performance around.
Why should I care?
For markets: Goldman’s long-short stockpickers were up about 17.4% year to date even as the Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF fell 9% in June.
The headline isn’t just “hedge funds made money” – it’s what kind of market made that possible. When semiconductors can sprint while mega-cap tech stumbles, the gap between stocks widens, creating more chances for long-short managers to hedge broad market moves and focus on relative bets.
The flip side is that this setup can make performance feel jumpy. If lots of funds crowd into the same momentum trades, a June-style reversal can trap shorts and turn small mistakes into sudden drawdowns. So the durability of these returns may depend less on where “the market” goes next and more on whether these stock-by-stock splits stay large.