Quant hedge funds were winners in a chaotic July

Last month, the machines won.

Quantitative hedge funds had a strong July, highlighted by several big algorithm-driven names that avoided the pain their human-run peers suffered last month.

At Renaissance Technologies, its largest external fund — known as Renaissance Institutional Equities — was up 9.2% in July, more than making up for losses over the previous six months. For the year, the fund is up 4.5%, a person close to the New York-based manager said.

The firm’s smaller Institutional Diversified Alpha fund continued its strong year with a 4.1% gain in July, bringing its 2026 returns to 14%, the person said.

Two Sigma’s largest fund, Absolute Return Enhanced, gained 0.6% last month, a person close to the firm said, and is up 9% on the year.

At Paris-based Capital Fund Management, the $12.4 billion Stratus fund made 1.9% in July, a person close to the manager told Business Insider. This gain puts the fund’s 2026 returns at 5.4%. Meanwhile, at $22 billion hedge fund Graham Capital, the firm’s Tactical Trend strategy made 1.8% in July and is now up 23.7% on the year.

London-based Qube, now managing $50 billion, fell slightly in its larger Torus strategy, losing 0.7% in July, bringing the fund’s 2026 returns to roughly 18%. The Qube fund, its longest-running strategy, was up 0.1% in July, a person familiar with the results told Business Insider, though the strategy’s year-to-date returns are unknown.

The funds mentioned declined to comment.

The relatively strong performance of computer-run hedge funds is more striking when compared to the rest of the industry. Even firms designed to make money in any market — the sprawling multistrategy funds that invest across geographies and asset classes — struggled in July, with the vast majority of the subsector suffering losses.

Of course, there were a pair of firms that dominated headlines in July and ended the month in vastly different states. Leopold Aschenbrenner’s Situational Awareness, the once-high-flying $45 billion tech fund, finished July down 67% and was forced to sell the bulk of its public equity holdings to pay back bank partners.

The buyer of the portfolio, Ken Griffin’s $71 billion Citadel, had a record-setting month, gaining 14.2% in its equities fund. It easily bested its peers in the multistrategy space with a 5.9% return in its flagship fund for the month, Business Insider reported.