Is "China Bridgewater" coming? Can it truly achieve all-weather performance?

In China, macro strategies have never been more in the spotlight than they are today.

In distribution channels, Bridgewater China’s products have long been regarded as “allocated goods”: accounts with tens of millions or hundreds of millions of yuan may only be able to purchase product quotas of 2 million yuan. A new private fund with Bridgewater DNA—Wenjing Fund—has also quickly gained market attention.

On the capital side, the concept of diversified allocation has become deeply ingrained, especially now when low-volatility products are scarce and macro strategies are performing well. Investors are more willing to pay for such “hedging stories.”

But behind the excitement, doubts remain: Can the “Chinese version of Bridgewater” truly achieve all-weather performance? Given the significant differences between Chinese and U.S. markets, how can local strategies be perfectly replicated? Are all funds with low risk preferences suitable for macro strategies?

Through multiple interviews, it is found that the “Chinese version of Bridgewater” is just beginning its evolution from simple replication to local adaptation.

When Bridgewater’s Wind Blows to China

“Bridgewater China’s products are hard to get a share of,” said a channel professional, vividly illustrating the current “Bridgewater craze.”

As a top overseas hedge fund, Bridgewater is renowned for its “all-weather” strategy. In recent years, its domestic products’ resilient performance has further enhanced this reputation.

In the Bloomberg global hedge fund performance rankings for 2025, Bridgewater occupies four spots in the top ten, with Bridgewater China’s products ranking fourth—up two places from 2024.

Funds rarely migrate without reason.

From 2022 to 2024, many domestic stock private funds experienced significant withdrawals, with some billion-yuan private funds’ net asset values even falling below 0.7 yuan. Against this backdrop, Bridgewater’s performance became even more scarce, and capital began pouring in aggressively.

A channel professional revealed that since last year, clients with assets exceeding 50 million yuan at some top channels could reserve subscription quotas for Bridgewater products. Some channels even raised the asset threshold for selling Bridgewater products to 100 million yuan, and such clients could only buy a mere 2 million yuan in base amount.

Unable to access Bridgewater, capital actively seeks “alternatives.”

Recently, Wenjing Fund has “gone viral.” Several industry insiders disclosed that although the fund’s subscription threshold is set at over 2 million yuan, it remains highly favored by capital. Even before large-scale roadshows, it easily raised over 100 million yuan, and many financial advisors are inquiring about its background and distribution channels.

The main reason is the “Bridgewater gene” within the core team. According to information, Wenjing Fund’s founder graduated from Harvard University and has extensive macro and quantitative trading experience both domestically and internationally; the company’s investment director has over ten years of Wall Street investment experience and has worked at American Bridgewater and Bridgewater China, serving as research director and investment manager.

Under this trend, domestic macro strategy products have also experienced rapid growth.

Industry insiders revealed that macro strategy products under billion-yuan quantitative private funds like Mingxun Investment have continued to sell well through channels since early 2026. The quantitative multi-asset strategy launched by Qianxiang Asset in 2023 has now surpassed 10 billion yuan in scale.

Additionally, data from Private Equity Data shows that in February alone, 900 new private equity funds with stock strategies were registered, followed by 200 with multi-asset (including macro) strategies. From the annual perspective, 2025 saw a total of 1,806 new registrations for multi-asset private funds, ranking second among the five major strategy categories.

What Are the Differences Between the “Chinese Bridgewater” and Bridgewater China?

“Single assets and strategies are increasingly unable to adapt to the changing macro environment and markets,” said Mengxi Investment, explaining the reasons behind the recent “Bridgewater craze.”

The private fund analysis states that in recent years, market volatility and style shifts have intensified significantly, and sensitivity to macro variables has further increased. This has led more investors to realize that relying on a single industry or asset is insufficient to cope with complex market conditions. Macro strategies spanning stocks, bonds, and commodities are becoming more valuable, and investors seeking steady returns regard multi-asset allocation and all-weather strategies as the “best answer” to asset allocation challenges.

However, the recent sharp fluctuations in gold and silver prices over the past two months have shattered some private funds’ all-weather dreams.

Third-party data shows that in the first week of March, several macro all-weather private funds experienced net value declines of over 5%, with some dropping more than 10%. In the first week of February, multiple all-weather private funds saw net value declines of 15%, indicating an overexposure to gold and silver.

“Admittedly, the private funds labeled as ‘Chinese Bridgewater’ today are a mixed bag,” said a veteran private fund founder.

He explained that the core of Bridgewater’s all-weather strategy lies in balancing asset price fluctuations caused by macro changes through risk parity models, based on long-term economic and market cycles. In China, many “all-weather” products are simply piecing together stock, bond, and commodity positions without the capacity or resources for in-depth macroeconomic research. The result is “similar in appearance but revealing gaps when markets fluctuate.”

The significant differences in financial tools and policy environments domestically and internationally also prevent domestic private funds from perfectly replicating Bridgewater.

A head of a trust asset management department pointed out that domestic equity investments mainly focus on A-shares and Hong Kong stocks, which have much higher volatility than U.S. stocks. Strictly applying risk parity models would require significantly increasing low-volatility assets like bonds. In the U.S., Bridgewater can leverage bond assets to dampen portfolio volatility, but such operations are difficult to implement domestically.

Moreover, the liquidity and policy sensitivity of China’s commodity futures markets are unique, and simply copying Bridgewater’s model often results in limited effectiveness.

Treading the “Bridgewater” River

The strong demand for steady returns and the difficulty of copying Bridgewater have prompted institutions to explore localized breakthroughs.

“While direct copying isn’t feasible, Bridgewater’s underlying methodology is worth learning from,” said a manager with years of experience exploring macro strategies.

A private equity professional in Shanghai revealed that with the decline of risk-free rates and increasing household wealth, the soil for macro strategies is becoming more fertile. “In the long run, China will produce globally influential macro institutions. What we need now is to absorb international experience and rebuild research and risk control models suited to China.”

Qianxiang Asset admits that due to differences in economic cycles domestically and abroad, the practice of over- or under-weighting assets based on the Merrill Lynch clock faces significant challenges in China. Therefore, the firm uses index-enhanced strategies and stock index CTAs to replace stock assets, commodity CTAs for commodities, and government bond futures and ETFs for bonds. It also employs risk parity models to determine asset and strategy allocations, ensuring each strategy contributes equally to portfolio volatility and effectively controlling overall risk.

Mengxi Investment told reporters that China’s capital markets have unique characteristics, making it impossible for domestic institutions to simply copy overseas models. In the future, private funds are likely to develop with leading institutions becoming platform-based and diversified, while small and medium-sized firms evolve toward specialization and segmentation. The key to long-term competitiveness lies in whether these institutions can turn multi-strategy, multi-asset layouts into stable, sustainable returns. The company plans to gradually advance its macro strategy deployment based on long-term research, technological capabilities, and risk management experience.

(Article source: Shanghai Securities News)