Bridgewater China achieved a return rate of 45% in 2025, marking the best performance in five years, with asset management scale leading foreign private equity at 60 billion

The world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, stated that it remains optimistic about the Chinese stock market this year, with a projected return rate of 45% for its onshore funds in China by 2025, significantly outperforming the market benchmark. This marks the best performance in at least five years.

After a significant rise last year, Bridgewater believes that Chinese stocks "remain attractive to some extent," due to improved corporate earnings expectations. The company's Shanghai-based private fund management firm expressed a "moderately optimistic" attitude towards stocks in a letter to investors in December, regardless of absolute returns or relative performance compared to other assets.

According to the investor letter, Bridgewater's onshore All Weather Enhanced Fund rose by 9.1% in the fourth quarter, pushing its full-year pre-fee return to 44.5%. The fund diversifies across stocks, bonds, and commodities. In contrast, the benchmark CSI 300 Index rose by 18%.

This performance adds to Bridgewater's record-breaking year globally and continues its strong momentum in China, helping it attract wealthy local investors and expand its lead over foreign competitors in the RMB 70 trillion (USD 10 trillion) Chinese hedge fund market.

Policy Support Creates Favorable Environment

Bridgewater stated that the supportive policy stance of the Chinese government, the alleviation of external risks, and the optimism brought by DeepSeek have boosted market confidence, creating a "very favorable" environment for the assets it trades.

Despite potential disruptions from factors including the trade war, "a diversified, balanced all-weather investment portfolio buffered the impact of market volatility," achieving "strong annual performance." The letter indicated that the systematic all-weather investment portfolio contributed 25.8% to the returns of the onshore strategy, while the team's active management, adjusting positions based on views of different assets, brought an additional 17% return. The company increased its equity weighting during the year, benefiting from the rebound.

Looking ahead, Bridgewater expects the supportive policy stance to continue and cites policymakers' ability and tools to stimulate growth when necessary, thus "maintaining a slight overweight on Chinese risk assets." However, the letter noted that these views were from the end of last year and may change.

Growing Demand for Asian Strategies

Bridgewater has seen increasing demand for its offshore Asian strategy, which diversifies investments across multiple economies in the region. According to media reports citing informed sources, a key focus this year is to open this strategy to more offshore clients in the region.

The company raised funds from Chinese investors for the Asia ex-China Total Return Fund last year, which rose 37% for the year, expanding its annualized return to 26% since its establishment in 2023. The informed source indicated that domestic investors can still invest in this fund this year through the Qualified Domestic Limited Partner (QDLP) program, but are subject to quota restrictions.

Leading the Foreign Hedge Fund Market

Bridgewater's performance far exceeds that of dozens of global companies operating wholly-owned hedge fund businesses in China. Last year, its onshore managed asset scale increased to an industry-leading RMB 60 billion. Two Sigma Investments later became the second foreign institution to manage over RMB 10 billion later that year According to data from the investment management company Paipai Wang, which tracks local hedge funds, Bridgewater's performance last year far exceeded the average return rate of 22% for Chinese multi-asset hedge funds.

The company also achieved a slight gain after slightly reducing its long-term bond holdings at the end of the year, while recording a small loss in commodities