Morgan Stanley DPE

As markets grow more complex and the dispersion of outcomes increases, we believe hedge funds will continue to play a valuable role in investor portfolios through 2026, offering the potential to enhance returns, reduce volatility, and provide diversification regardless of the market’s ultimate direction.

Performance is increasingly driven by structural growth drivers rather than cyclical market exposure. Secular themes such as AI, deglobalization, demographic shifts and energy demand are creating clear winners and laggards. This environment reinforces the importance of selectivity, diversification and active capital allocation to capture emerging pockets of outperformance.

We are currently observing a structural reorganization within established megatrends. In data centers, compute is shifting from a centralized model to a distributed, multi-layered network, as inference-driven and latency-sensitive workloads scale. This expands demand and reshapes where and how infrastructure is deployed.