As of June 17, 2024, the most shorted stock was for, the American holographic technology services provider, MicroCloud Hologram Inc., with 66.64 percent of their total float having been shorted. This is a change from mid-January 2021, when video game retailed GameStop had an incredible 121.07 percent of their available shares in a short position. In effect this means that investors had 'borrowed' more shares (with a future promise to return them) than the total number of shares available for public trading. Owing to this behavior of professional investors, retail investors enacted a campaign to drive up the stock price of Gamestop, leading to losses of billions when investors had to repurchase the stock they had borrowed. At this time, a similar – but less effective – social media campaign was also carried out for the stock price of cinema operator AMC, and the price of silver. What is short selling? Short selling is essentially where an investor bets on a share price falling by: borrowing a number of shares selling these shares while the price is still high; purchasing the same number again once the price falls; then returning the borrowed shares at a profit. Of course, a profit will only be made if the share price does fall; should the share price rise the investor will then need to purchase the shares back at a higher price, and thus incur a loss. Short selling can lead to some very large profits in a short amount of time, with Tesla stock generating over one billion dollars in short sell profits during the first week of March 2020 alone, owing to the financial crash caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. However, owing to the short-term, opportunistic nature of short selling, these returns look less impressive when considered as net profits from short sell positions over the full year. The risks of short selling Short selling carries greater risks than traditional investments, and for this reason financial advisors often recommend against this strategy for ‘retail’ (i.e. non-professional) investors. The reason for this is that losses from short selling are potentially uncapped, whereas losses from traditional investments are limited to the initial cost. For example, if someone purchases 100 dollars of shares, the maximum they can lose is the 100 dollars the spent on those shares. However, say someone borrows 100 dollars of shares instead, betting on the price falling. If these shares are then sold for 100 dollars but the price subsequently rises, the losses could greatly exceed the initial investment should the price rise to, say, 500 dollars. The risks of short selling can be seen by looking again at Tesla, with the company causing the greatest losses over 2020 from short selling at over 40 billion U.S. dollars.

Are hedge funds worth your money?

Hedge funds have developed from investment funds that were designed to lower the risk of your portfolio to a multitude of different investment styles with different goals. Their heyday was probably during the 90s and early 2000s when several star hedge fund managers rose to prominence and their assets under management grew significantly. However, since then hedge funds have been under scrutiny as their investment returns have been lacking and their ability to function as a diversification to a traditional stock and bond portfolio was put into question. As hedge funds have their own set of leverage and investment rules it is no wonder they have been accused of being greedy, unsuccessful and secretive. However, with this dataset you can make your own analysis.

Content

This dataset covers monthly hedge fund returns starting from 1997. The date column refers to the last day of the month - the end date of the return period, if I understand correctly. There are 12 different hedge fund strategies covered and the return index series are formed as an aggregate of other hedge fund index providers.

The strategy explanations are in EDHEC website:

• Convertible Arbitrage - https://risk.edhec.edu/conv-arb/
• CTA Global - https://risk.edhec.edu/cta-global/
• Distressed Securities - https://risk.edhec.edu/dist-sec/
• Emerging Markets - https://risk.edhec.edu/emg-mkts/
• Equity Market Neutral - https://risk.edhec.edu/equity-market-neutral/
• Event Driven - https://risk.edhec.edu/event-driven/
• Fixed Income Arbitrage - https://risk.edhec.edu/fix-inc-arb/
• Global Macro - https://risk.edhec.edu/global-macro/
• Long/Short Equity - https://risk.edhec.edu/ls-equity/
• Merger Arbitrage - https://risk.edhec.edu/merger-arb/
• Relative Value - https://risk.edhec.edu/relative-value/
• Short Selling - https://risk.edhec.edu/short-selling/
• Funds of Funds - https://risk.edhec.edu/fof/

Acknowledgements

All credit for the maintenance and upload of the data goes to EDHEC. You should check their website for additional resources:

https://risk.edhec.edu/all-downloads-hedge-funds-indices

Inspiration

The EDHEC hedge fund data is the data used in examples/vignettes of PortfolioAnalytics - a package for optimizing, testing and analyzing portfolio returns. You should be easily able to expand the analysis from the vignettes just by using the larger dataset available here:

https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/PortfolioAnalytics/index.html

In 2025, ** percent of adults in the United States invested in the stock market. This figure has remained steady over the last few years and is still below the levels before the Great Recession, when it peaked in 2007 at ** percent. What is the stock market? The stock market can be defined as a group of stock exchanges where investors can buy shares in a publicly traded company. In more recent years, it is estimated an increasing number of Americans are using neobrokers, making stock trading more accessible to investors. Other investments A significant number of people think stocks and bonds are the safest investments, while others point to real estate, gold, bonds, or a savings account. Since witnessing the significant one-day losses in the stock market during the financial crisis, many investors were turning towards these alternatives in hopes for more stability, particularly for investments with longer maturities. This could explain the decrease in this statistic since 2007. Nevertheless, some speculators enjoy chasing the short-run fluctuations, and others see value in choosing particular stocks.

Are hedge funds worth your money? Hedge funds have developed from investment funds that were designed to lower the risk of your portfolio to a multitude of different investment styles with different goals. Their heyday was probably during the 90s and early 2000s when several star hedge fund managers rose to prominence and their assets under management grew significantly. However, since then hedge funds have been under scrutiny as their investment returns have been lacking and their ability to function as a diversification to a traditional stock and bond portfolio was put into question. As hedge funds have their own set of leverage and investment rules it is no wonder they have been accused of being greedy, unsuccessful and secretive. However, with this dataset you can make your own analysis.

Content This dataset covers monthly hedge fund returns starting from 1997. The date column refers to the last day of the month - the end date of the return period, if I understand correctly. There are 12 different hedge fund strategies covered and the return index series are formed as an aggregate of other hedge fund index providers.

The strategy explanations are in EDHEC website:

Convertible Arbitrage - https://risk.edhec.edu/conv-arb/ CTA Global - https://risk.edhec.edu/cta-global/ Distressed Securities - https://risk.edhec.edu/dist-sec/ Emerging Markets - https://risk.edhec.edu/emg-mkts/ Equity Market Neutral - https://risk.edhec.edu/equity-market-neutral/ Event Driven - https://risk.edhec.edu/event-driven/ Fixed Income Arbitrage - https://risk.edhec.edu/fix-inc-arb/ Global Macro - https://risk.edhec.edu/global-macro/ Long/Short Equity - https://risk.edhec.edu/ls-equity/ Merger Arbitrage - https://risk.edhec.edu/merger-arb/ Relative Value - https://risk.edhec.edu/relative-value/ Short Selling - https://risk.edhec.edu/short-selling/ Funds of Funds - https://risk.edhec.edu/fof/ Acknowledgements All credit for the maintenance and upload of the data goes to EDHEC. You should check their website for additional resources:

https://risk.edhec.edu/all-downloads-hedge-funds-indices

Inspiration The EDHEC hedge fund data is the data used in examples/vignettes of PortfolioAnalytics - a package for optimizing, testing and analyzing portfolio returns. You should be easily able to expand the analysis from the vignettes just by using the larger dataset available here:

https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/PortfolioAnalytics/index.html

A list of the top 50 Scion Asset Management holdings showing which stocks are owned by Michael Burry's hedge fund.

The value of assets of exchange traded funds (ETFs) worldwide grew markedly during the period from 2003 to 2024, reaching over ***** trillion U.S. dollars in 2024. The number of ETFs worldwide grew as well during the period, from *** in 2003 up to ***** in 2022. What are ETFs? An exchange-traded fund is a type of investment fund traded on a stock exchange but differs from traditional mutual funds as they can be traded throughout the day and not just once a day. Most ETFs are following the performance of a stock market index, such as the S&P 500. Benefits of ETFs ETFs are an easy way for an investor to diversify their portfolio and are attractive to investors for several reasons. The stock-like features that they exhibit make them manageable, whether they are being used for asset allocation, long-term investment purposes, or short-term market-timed investment strategies. ETFs do not require active management, which has the advantage of making them relatively low cost. They also have typically low marketing costs and accounting expenses.