Goldman Sachs: Hedge Fund withdrawals in March hit a more than four-year high, due to the impact of the Iran war on the market.

Goldman Sachs said in a client report on Wednesday that global stock markets have suffered heavy losses due to market volatility caused by the Iran war, dragging down the performance of many of the world's largest fund management companies and leading to the most severe monthly drawdown for global hedge funds since January 2022. Hedge funds typically aim to outperform the market and prove the reasonableness of their fees through excess returns, but in the first quarter of this year, various investment strategies have performed poorly. During this period, the S&P 500 index fell by 4.63% and the Nasdaq 100 index fell by 4.87%. For hedge funds that performed extremely well in 2025, this is undoubtedly a painful return to reality. Goldman's report noted that this drawdown is the largest since January 2022, when investors were mainly concerned about the increasingly hawkish policy stance of the Federal Reserve and geopolitical tensions. The Goldman Sachs prime brokerage report shows that long-short stock picking hedge funds in various regions all experienced negative returns, with funds in Asia performing the worst, falling by 7.3%; European fund managers' returns decreased by 6.3%. US funds fell by an average of 4.3% in March. As of March 31, the annual returns for long-short fund managers in Asia, Europe, and the United States were 6.5%, -1.8%, and -2.4% respectively. Goldman Sachs stated that the technology, media, and telecommunications sectors were among the hardest hit, with long-short funds falling by 7.8% in March. Funds focused on healthcare fell by around 0.9% in March. The report also pointed out that hedge funds have been selling global stocks for the fourth consecutive month, with the selling pace reaching the fastest in 13 years. In addition, the equal-weighted average return and median return for long-short funds in March fell by 3.96% and 4.77%, indicating that larger multi-manager funds had underperformed during the month.