Macro hedge funds are having their best year since 2008. The HFR Macro Index returned 16% by end of November 2025, driven by massive swings in currencies, commodities, and bonds. Caxton's flagship fund gained 14%. Rokos Capital hit 17.5%. Greg Coffey's Kirkoswald Capital returned 21% by mid-December. Meanwhile, the majority of hedge funds, including multi-strategy platforms and equity-focused managers, underperformed dramatically. They weren't positioned for what actually moved markets in 2025. This isn't a story about macro funds being smarter. It's a story about what happens when positioning discipline meets regime volatility. The managers who captured double-digit returns weren't predicting the future. They were trading what was actually moving: dollar weakness, gold rallies, and bond volatility triggered by fiscal concerns and Trump trade policies. The lesson for emerging managers is uncomfortable: having the right strategy doesn't matter if your positioning doesn't reflect the regime you're in. Macro funds didn't outperform because they had better models. They outperformed because they positioned their portfolios to profit from the volatility everyone else was hedging against. Ken Tropin, founder of Graham Capital, described the environment bluntly: "There's a lot to engage with." His discretionary portfolio managers made most of their profits trading the dollar, gold, and US government bonds. Not by forecasting where those assets would end the year, but by trading the path, the tactical moves, the short-term dislocations, the moments when positioning became crowded and unwound violently. That's the distinction. Most hedge funds forecast correctly that rates would stabilize, that equities would rally, that inflation would moderate. But they positioned defensively. They hedged their exposures. They stayed neutral on currencies and commodities because the consensus narrative said "soft landing, equities up, nothing else matters." Macro funds did the opposite. They positioned for what was actually volatile, not what should be volatile according to the narrative. The dollar weakened sharply after Trump's tariff announcements in April. Gold rallied 30%+ as central banks diversified reserves. Long-term bond yields spiked on fiscal concerns, creating massive opportunities in "steepener" trades (betting the gap between short and long-term rates would widen). Every one of those moves was forecastable. But most hedge funds weren't positioned to capture them. They were positioned for stability, not volatility. And in 2025, volatility was where the returns were. The uncomfortable truth: if you're an emerging manager and you didn't capture meaningful returns in 2025, the problem wasn't your strategy. It was your positioning. The opportunities were visible. The question is whether your portfolio reflected them. Macro funds proved something critical: positioning discipline, the willingness to size bets based on what's actually moving, not what the narrative says should move, separates managers who capture regimes from managers who narrate them. For allocators evaluating emerging managers heading into 2026, the question isn't "what's your forecast?" It's "show me your positioning. If I looked at your portfolio, would I understand what regime you're trading?" Because in 2025, the managers with the right positioning returned 16-21%. The managers with the right narrative but wrong positioning returned 5-8%. That's the gap that matters.