Hedge funds have enjoyed their best quarter relative to US equities in four years as big bets on the rise in the US dollar paid off for some of the world’s best known managers, helping the industry break years of mediocre returns.

Funds including Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater, Louis Bacon’s Moore Capital and Alan Howard’s Brevan Howard have all enjoyed strong starts to 2015, after making the correct call that the US dollar would rise sharply against other major currencies.

Managers said the trade will remain a cornerstone of macro hedge fund portfolios in the coming months, despite a recent run of poor economic data from the US, because the Federal Reserve continues to edge towards tighter monetary policy while Europe and Japan are in the midst of quantitative easing.