Economic Recession is Crushing These 5 Hedge Funds

4. RTW Investments LLC

YTD Loss as of May 2022: 34%

RTW Investments LLC is an investment management company based in New York. It is one of the premier funds on Wall Street that focuses solely on investments in biotech firms. RTW Flagship Fund, one of the elite offerings of the investment firm, was down close to double-digits at the end of May 2022, per Reuters news agency. Investments in the biotech sector overall have nosedived in recent months amid rising inflation and the prospect of a looming recession, which has forced investors towards value stocks with established business models. 

A top holding of RTW Investments LLC is Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (NYSE:TMO), a firm that markets analytical instruments, specialty diagnostics, and laboratory products. At the end of the first quarter of 2022, 101 hedge funds in the database of Insider Monkey held stakes worth $7.9 billion in Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (NYSE:TMO), up from 96 in the preceding quarter worth $9.4 billion. 

In its Q4 2021 investor letter, ClearBridge Investments, an asset management firm, highlighted a few stocks and Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (NYSE:TMO) was one of them. Here is what the fund said:

“Improving health remains a key impact theme for the portfolio, and over the past year or so we have increased our exposure to the health care sector, through the addition of Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (NYSE:TMO), a leading health care tools company, a leading provider of fertility benefit management services to self-insured employers that offers a rare win-win-win for employers, employees, health systems, and doctors, with clear savings and quality improvements.”