What is your basis for saying that their overall position is negative? I know lots of EDF Traders and I would not say they are not skilled or that it is not their core business.
Because my PhD research is on hedgers and speculators on Commodity Crude oil futures market. Consistent with previous studies, I also have found that hedgers' overall daily return is significantly negative at 1 percent level. I use Thomson Reuters tick history data from 1996 to 2015, millisecond data. Besides hedgers show consistent cognitive limitation in terms of evaluating price. They initiate a lot of buys when prices fall from $100.00 to $99.99, thinking that a penny fall is substantially large. Any strategy based on static number, or based on psychological factors will not produce a good outcome.
If they hold their positions for longer period with asymmetry information, then they might have a chance...but it's not only me who have found that their overall performance is significantly negative.