Stocks Rise at the Close as Tech Leads, While Hedge Funds Tilt Bearish on Consumers

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U.S. stocks closed higher Friday, with technology shares leading gains as investors digested shifting hedge-fund positioning and ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 183.04 points, or 0.38%, to 48,134.9. The S&P 500 added 59.74 points, or 0.88%, ending at 6,834.50, while the Nasdaq Composite climbed 301.26 points, or 1.31%, to 23,307.6. Smaller stocks also advanced, with the Russell 2000 gaining 0.84% to 250.81.

Beneath the surface, hedge funds are increasingly betting against consumer-oriented companies, according to data compiled by Hazeltree, a treasury-management firm that aggregates anonymized positioning information from alternative asset managers. The shift marks a change from earlier in the year, when bearish positioning was more heavily concentrated in 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, Hazeltree’s senior vice president of the Data Insights Division, in an interview with AInvest’s Capital & Power. The firm’s November 2025 short-side crowdedness report tracks how many hedge funds hold short positions in individual securities across global markets.

Hazeltree’s crowdedness metric focuses on participation rather than position size. “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,” Smith said.

Examples of crowded consumer shorts span regions, including European spirits makers such as Pernod Ricard and Campari, U.S. companies like Marriott and Campbell Soup, and Asia-Pacific firms including Oriental Land and Ajinomoto, according to Smith.

The repositioning comes as investors confront what Smith described as an unusually complex backdrop, shaped by geopolitical tensions, tariff risks, artificial intelligence investment and developments in cryptocurrencies. “What we’re seeing is a slight…disturbance in the force,” he said, noting that long and short crowding have at times risen simultaneously.

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