Wall Street: Once-hot Wall Street funds unravel fast with no one to save

How desperate? Just look at the all-out plunge this year in returns that has taken hold across investment strategies that ride everything from US stocks big and small to cryptocurrencies and corporate debt.

In the grip of the tariff fallout, 90 of the top 100 best-performing exchange-traded funds of last year are down in 2025, with an average loss of 13%, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. At the same time, dormant trades of all sorts have staged a comeback: Nine of the 20 worst-performing equity mutual funds of 2024 are posting positive returns this year.

It’s the latest sign of the pain hitting investment managers as the most disruptive economic program in decades threatens to upend the American consumer and business world. As Corporate America sounds the alarm on profits and animal spirits retreat with dealmaking on the wane, traders are plowing into havens such as cash and gold, with proxies for both getting windfall inflows.

“People have had a perception that there is no political risk, no macro risk, geopolitical risk in the United States, and it was a safe haven in the world,” said Richard Cook, co-founder of Cook & Bynum Capital Management in Birmingham, Alabama. “The uncertainty around the policy changes with this administration is shaking that.”

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Thanks to an emphasis on companies with operations in Mexico, Chile and Germany, his the Cook & Bynum Fund is up almost 14% in 2025, putting it in the top 2% of US portfolios this year, after being among the worst in 2024, according to Bloomberg Intelligence data from David Cohne. That’s a relatively common experience for this year’s money-management champions, with many coming back from the dead after a tough 2024.From bets on high-flying tech stocks to digital asset trades, ETFs that scored gains of as much as 150% last year are tumbling in 2025. The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF (ticker GBTC), which soared more than 100% in 2024, is down nearly 10% this year. The Invesco S&P 500 Momentum ETF (ticker SPMO) which rose 45%, has tumbled 7% in 2025, while the Defiance Quantum ETF (ticker QTUM), which jumped about 50% last year, is now down more than 10%.Hopes for a quick deliverance from April’s market chaos were dashed again this week when Federal Reserve chair Powell said fast-evolving trade policy threatened to awaken inflation and prevent him from coming to the aid of the economy. President Trump summarily called for his firing, the biggest salvo yet in a drama that looks poised to transfix investors for months to come.

About-Face
It’s all hurting investment funds across assets that boomed as recently as January when the likes of technology stocks and corporate debt soared. The S&P 500 fell 1.5% on the week and is down in nine of the last 12. The dollar dropped about 0.7% on the week, extending its year-to-date loss to more than 6%. Treasury-market volatility continues to hover near the highest levels since the election.

“There’s just a degree of nervousness that’s almost existential of whether or not the US is what it used to be,” said Amy Wu Silverman, head of derivatives strategy at RBC Capital Markets. “All these historical safe havens just have not acted as flights to safety this time around. Even the magnificent seven used to be a flight to safety.”

Countries spent the week racing to negotiate deals with the US to avert the steep levies Trump imposed – and then quickly paused – on about 60 trading partners. Despite the temporary relief, the World Trade organization cut its forecast for the year, saying the volume of trade would decline by 0.2% in 2025, almost three percentage points lower than it would have been without new tariffs. The rebellion against the US financial order is minting new winners among international strategies, cheap shares, and time-honored havens like Treasury bills and precious metal.

The SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) is among the biggest asset-gatherers across all US ETFs through April, pushing its assets above $100 billion for the first time.

The fund has vacuumed up more than $8.4 billion in 2025, more than the Nasdaq 100 behemoth QQQ has taken in.