Hedge funds increased bearish bets ahead of Friday’s blowout US jobs report, banks say

NEW YORK – Global hedge funds added more bets against US stocks over the last week through Jan 9, ahead of a blowout US jobs report that sparked a sell-off on Wall Street, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs said in notes on Friday.

The US Labor Department’s closely watched employment report on Friday showed job growth accelerated to 256,000 jobs in December, the most since March, while the unemployment fell to 4.1%.

The hotter-than-expected jobs data sent stocks spiralling, sending the S&P 500 down 1.54% on Friday and erasing all its 2025 gains.

Morgan Stanley said portfolio managers increased shorts – or bets stocks will fall – in sectors such as staples, software, financials and healthcare in the days ahead of the jobs report, while they sold long positions in communication services.

Still, the bank said hedge funds bought European and Asian stocks over the same period.

Goldman Sachs also said short positions outpaced long additions to portfolios, but it saw this trend in all regions, led by North America and Europe.

“We’ve seen a rotation where managers have been taking profits, selling their longs, and then adding to shorts,” said Jon Caplis, CEO of hedge fund research firm PivotalPath. He said the move is also related to the Federal Reserve’s more hawkish take on interest rate cuts and big data releases, such as the consumer price index on Wednesday.

One exception was the technology, media, and telecommunications sector (TMT), Goldman Sachs said, as hedge funds added it at the fastest pace in three months.

Stocks in the technology sector were among the hardest hit on Friday, down 2.23%, behind financials and real estate. Big tech companies start to report earnings after Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Jan 20.

As two of the biggest global prime brokers, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley track the portfolios of their hedge fund clients to indicate positioning and flow trends.

(Reporting by Carolina Mandl, in New York; editing by Diane Craft)