Hedge funds suffer worst day since August as AI stock selloff deepens

Hedge funds just had the kind of day that gets mentioned in investor letters with a lot of careful adjectives. Quant strategies logged their worst session since August, and the broader hedge fund universe notched its third “never since COVID” day of 2026. How bad was it According to Goldman Sachs, October 15 marked the third day this year on which all broad hedge fund strategies fell by more than 80 basis points in a single session. A basis point is one hundredth of a percentage point, so that is a drop of more than 0.8% across the board. On October 15, global stock pickers lost 0.9%. Asia-focused managers had a far rougher time, falling 2.6% in one day. Tech-focused funds dropped 2.0%. Systematic long-short funds and multi-strategy funds each slid roughly 1%. Zoom out to the full week and global long-short funds were down 2.9%. Asia-focused stock pickers fared worse over a longer window, posting a 6.8% loss in the first half of October. That 6.8% slide wiped out more than half of the gains those Asia managers had built up since late June 2026. Quants, the funds that trade using mathematical models rather than human gut calls, posted their weakest performance since August 2026. The...