Nordic hedge funds are heading toward year-end with strong momentum, advancing 0.8 percent in October to extend their winning streak that began in May. With less than two months remaining in 2025, the Nordic Hedge Index is up 7.6 percent year to date, marking another solid year following its best annual performance since 2009.
Every strategy group in the Nordic Hedge Index finished October in positive territory, led by diversified and multi-manager funds. Diversified strategies – covering multi-asset, multi-strategy, and niche approaches – rose 1.3 percent in October, lifting year-to-date gains to 7.6 percent. Multi-manager vehicles were close behind with a 1.1 percent gain on average, extending their advance for the first ten months of the year to 4.3 percent.
Equity long/short managers, the top-performing strategy group in the Nordic Hedge Index this year, advanced 0.8 percent in October, lifting their year-to-date return to 9.8 percent and already surpassing last year’s full-year gain. Long-only equity managers, tracked separately from the Nordic Hedge Index, also enjoyed a strong month with an average increase of 2.7 percent, extending their 2025 performance to 14.7 percent.
Fixed-income hedge funds added 0.4 percent in October to reach an 8.6 percent gain for the first ten months of the year. Systematic trend-following CTAs, macro, and managed futures funds rose 0.6 percent on average during the month, further narrowing their year-to-date decline to 3.3 percent.
Performance dispersion narrowed in October following a strong September, when top performers delivered outsized gains. The top 20 percent of funds gained 4.4 percent on average in October, while the bottom 20 percent declined 2.6 percent. This contrasts with September’s wider spread, when the top quintile advanced 6.4 percent and the bottom quintile slipped 1.1 percent. Overall, 78 percent of reporting funds posted gains in October, while a slightly higher 87 percent remain in positive territory year to date.
Best Performing Nordic Hedge Funds in October and Year-to-Date
Among individual performers, Rhenman Healthcare Equity L/S topped the charts in October with a 9.9 percent gain. Following a challenging year for the healthcare sector, the fund rebounded strongly in October, with positive contributions across all subsectors, most notably from biotechnology and medical technology. Visio Allocator, which employs a flexible multi-strategy approach allocating across equities, fixed income, and market-neutral strategies, followed with a 6.7 percent return. After a difficult start to the year, the fund has delivered solid results since April, lifting its year-to-date performance to just above 10 percent.
For long/short equity fund Norron Select, October was defined by a series of strong earnings releases. The fund was up more than ten percent at one stage before ending the month with a 6.5 percent gain, still a strong result that pushed it into positive territory for the year. RPM Evolving CTA Fund, a multi-manager CTA vehicle, also enjoyed its second consecutive strong month, advancing 6.2 percent in October after a 7.6 percent gain in September, bringing its year-to-date performance back to flat.
Meanwhile, Tidan Global Equity Enhanced, which applies a portable-alpha strategy by combining Nova’s market-neutral options and volatility-arbitrage approach with equity exposure through low-cost futures, gained 5.9 percent in October, extending its year-to-date performance to 23 percent. Its sister fund, Tidan Nova, wasn’t far behind, up 4.9 percent for the month and 19.1 percent year to date.
Top Performing Long-Only Equity Funds
In September of 2023, HedgeNordic introduced a new sub-strategy category to the Nordic Hedge Index: Equity Long-Only (ELO). This category is home to funds that would fall short of qualifying as a hedge fund due to their long-only trading approach but exhibit habitual characteristics of a hedge fund strategy (e.g., leverage and derivatives usage, portfolio concentration, fee structure, a spin-off of a long/short strategy, and absolute return objectives, among others).
