After six consecutive months of gains, the Nordic hedge fund industry recorded a slight dip in November, edging down 0.3 percent on average. With less than one month remaining in the year, the industry, as represented by the Nordic Hedge Index, is up 7.3 percent year-to-date and is on track to deliver a third consecutive year of solid performance.
Among the five strategy sub-groups in the Nordic Hedge Index, only fixed-income managers ended November firmly in positive territory, while the rest were either flat or modestly negative. Fixed-income hedge funds gained 0.5 percent on average, lifting their year-to-date advance to 9.1 percent. Equity long/short managers, the strongest-performing group this year until last month, were down 0.4 percent in November and trimmed their year-to-date gain at 9.1 percent. Long-only equity managers, tracked separately from the index, fell 1.5 percent in November, reducing their 2025 advance to 12.3 percent.
Multi-manager funds were also unchanged during the month, ending the first 11 months of the year with a gain of 4.3 percent. Diversified strategies, spanning multi-asset, multi-strategy, and niche approaches, declined 0.7 percent on average, trimming their year-to-date return to 6.6 percent. Systematic trend-following CTAs, macro, and managed futures strategies slipped 0.3 percent, extending their decline for the year to 3.5 percent – the only strategy category still in negative territory for 2025.
Performance dispersion remained broadly stable month-over-month, although top performers delivered lower gains while bottom performers posted deeper losses. The top 20 percent of funds advanced 2.8 percent in November, compared to 4.4 percent in October. The bottom 20 percent declined 3.9 percent, versus a 2.6 percent drop in the previous month. Slightly more than half of reporting funds generated positive returns in November, and 86 percent remain in positive territory for the year.
Best Performing Nordic Hedge Funds in November and Year-to-Date
Rhenman Healthcare Equity L/S topped the performance table for a second consecutive month. Benefiting from what the asset manager describes as the “regulatory fog lifting” in the U.S. healthcare sector, the fund has returned 34 percent over the past four months, including a 12.6 percent gain in November. This strong run has pushed its year-to-date performance just above 10 percent.
Systematic equity long/short strategy Colosseum Global Alpha followed closely with a 9.5 percent gain in November, fully recovering from a similar-sized decline the month before. Svelland Global Trading Fund rose an estimated 5.8 percent, recouping earlier losses in 2025.
Proxy Renewable Long/Short Energy and CABA Flex3 completed the top five with similar returns of 2.9 percent each. Proxy Renewable Long/Short Energy, following two difficult years and a slow start to 2025, has now staged a seven-month recovery, delivering a cumulative gain of 62 percent through November and re-entering the ranks of the year’s top ten performers in the Nordic hedge fund industry. CABA Flex3, launched in the summer of 2025 to capture risk premiums in Scandinavian mortgage bonds through a three-year maturity structure, has already advanced 8.5 percent since inception.
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).
