GS Prime book activity
Goldman’s Prime book shows U.S. equities modestly net‑sold month‑to‑date, with single‑stock selling outweighing ETF short covers and a net‑exposure/low‑short ratio near the 42nd/3rd percentiles on a three‑year lookback. ( ) Those Prime data posts ran alongside Goldman’s Q1 results—revenues up 14% to $17.2 billion and EPS up 24% to $17.74—reported in the same thread. (x.com)
Goldman Sachs’ hedge-fund desk is showing a cautious U.S. stock market: clients have been modest net sellers in April, even as Goldman’s own quarterly earnings jumped. (goldmansachs.com, finance.biggo.com) The positioning data came from Goldman Prime Services, the unit that finances and tracks hedge-fund trading. In the firm’s latest read, selling in individual stocks outweighed buying tied to closing exchange-traded fund short bets, leaving the overall U.S. equities book modestly net-sold month to date. (goldmansachs.com, finance.biggo.com, bloomberg.com) Goldman’s desk said overall net exposure sat near the 42nd percentile of its three-year range, while the long-short ratio was near the 3rd percentile. In plain terms, hedge funds still had relatively little net bullish exposure and unusually low long positions relative to shorts versus recent history. (finance.biggo.com, corporatefinanceinstitute.com) That snapshot followed several weeks of defensive trading in Goldman’s prime-brokerage data. On March 30, Goldman data cited by TradingView showed global equities logged their biggest net selling since April 2025 and a sixth straight week of outflows, led by short selling. (tradingview.com) A week later, Bloomberg reported that hedge funds were closing U.S. stock short positions at the fastest pace since 2020 after a temporary ceasefire announcement in the Iran conflict. The April reading suggests that short covering in index products did not translate into broad new buying of single names. (bloomberg.com, finance.biggo.com) The split matters for how investors read the tape. Covering an exchange-traded fund short often means reducing a hedge on the market as a whole, while selling single stocks can signal managers are still cutting company-specific risk. (goldmansachs.com, corporatefinanceinstitute.com) Goldman reported first-quarter net revenue of $17.23 billion on April 13, up 14% from a year earlier, with diluted earnings per share of $17.55 and net earnings of $5.63 billion. CNBC said equities trading revenue rose 27% to a record $5.33 billion, helped by financing activity for hedge-fund clients in prime brokerage. (goldmansachs.com, cnbc.com) Goldman’s own hedge-fund outlook in February said allocators were increasing exposure to the industry after hedge funds returned an average 11.8% in 2025 and 11.9% in 2024. April’s prime-book data shows those funds entered the second quarter with cash to deploy, but not with aggressive net-long positioning. (goldmansachs.com, finance.biggo.com) For now, Goldman’s message is two-track: the bank is making more money from client activity, and many of those clients are still trading U.S. stocks carefully rather than leaning hard into the rally. (goldmansachs.com, cnbc.com, finance.biggo.com)
