Hedge-Fund Short Bets Tilt Toward Consumer Stocks, According to Hazeltree Data

A growing share of hedge-fund short positions has shifted toward consumer-oriented companies, according to proprietary data compiled by Hazeltree, a treasury-management firm that aggregates anonymized position information from alternative asset managers.

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Hazeltree's Sr. Vice President of the Data Insights Division, in an interview with AInvest's Capital & Power said that the trend emerged most clearly in Hazeltree’s November 2025 “short-side crowdedness” report. It tracks how many hedge funds hold short positions in specific securities. The data suggest that consumer names have become a focal point for bearish positioning after much of the year saw greater emphasis on technology and semiconductor stocks.

“Out of the 90 securities that we covered…over 40, 45% of them were related to the consumer type of industry,” said Smith. The report covers large, mid and small-cap stocks across North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, with 10 securities per category and region .

Hazeltree has provided treasury-management services to alternative asset managers for more than a decade. As part of that work, clients allow the firm to use their data in aggregated and anonymized form, enabling Hazeltree to publish derivative datasets that track positioning trends across the hedge-fund industry, Smith said .

The company’s monthly report does not simply identify heavily shorted stocks by dollar value. Instead, it emphasizes what Smith described as “crowdedness,” a measure of how many hedge funds hold positions in a given security. “If there are 100 hedge funds [and] 99 of them are into a short position on a particular stock, we’d say that’s the highest level of crowdedness,” he said, distinguishing the concept from the absolute size of positions .

In November, that crowdedness increasingly appeared in consumer-related companies across regions. Smith cited European firms such as Pernod Ricard and Campari, U.S.-based companies including Marriott and Campbell Soup, and Asia-Pacific names such as Oriental Land and Ajinomoto as examples of where hedge funds were concentrating short exposure .

The shift comes amid what Smith described as an unusually uncertain investing environment. He pointed to geopolitical tensions, tariffs, developments in artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies, and broader macroeconomic questions as factors contributing to changing positioning patterns. “What we’re seeing is a slight…disturbance in the force,” Smith said, adding that long and short crowding have sometimes risen simultaneously in the same stocks, a divergence from more typical patterns in prior years .

Hazeltree’s data also show evolving attitudes toward technology and AI-linked companies. Smith noted that Tesla, long a fixture near the top of crowdedness rankings, fell out of that position during the year, while other names tied to AI investment appeared. “It was a great surprise to me to see IBM coming on the top 10 a few months ago,” he said, adding that Palo Alto Networks had also featured prominently .

According to Smith, hedge funds use crowdedness metrics as one input among many, including quantitative models and fundamental analysis. For other investors, the data can signal where “there’s a lot of scrutiny and a lot of pressure on share prices,” he said, though Hazeltree does not frame the report as investment advice .

The firm covers roughly 15,000 global securities and tracks both physical holdings and swap positions, which Smith described as a distinguishing feature of its dataset. Access to such information, he said, is becoming broader as data flows more freely between institutional and retail segments of the market .

As the year closes, Hazeltree plans to publish a year-end report summarizing trends across 2025. Smith cautioned against overconfidence in forecasting. “The only certain thing will be the level of uncertainty,” he said, adding that markets often stabilize as investors adjust to unpredictable conditions .