Bill Ackman Has Had Another Blockbuster Year. His Fund Is Still Cheap. (Barron’s)
Bill Ackman is ending a second blockbuster year in a row, but investors still aren’t won over, as Ackman’s large overseas closed-end fund, Pershing Square Holdings continues to trade at a large discount to its net asset value. That could mean an opportunity. The fund offers a play on both a concentrated equity investment portfolio, including stocks like Chipotle Mexican Grill (ticker: CMG), Lowe’s (LOW), Starbucks (SBUX), and Hilton Worldwide Holdings (HLT), and Ackman’s big special-purpose acquisition company, Pershing Square…
Vedanta Resources to Issue $400 Million Notes to Oaktree (Bloomberg)
A unit of Vedanta Resources will issue $400 million in notes to an entity under Oaktree Capital Group, as the mining conglomerate looks to meet liquidity needs. The notes will be partly secured by shares in Mumbai-listed unit Vedanta Ltd., according to separate exchange filings from Vedanta and the U.S. hedge fund.
Exclusive: Hedge Fund Third Point Urges Intel to Explore Deal Options (Reuters)
(Reuters) – Activist hedge fund Third Point LLC is pushing Intel Corp to explore strategic alternatives, including whether it should remain an integrated device manufacturer, according to a letter it sent to the chipmaker’s chairman on Tuesday that was reviewed by Reuters. Third Point CEO Daniel Loeb wrote to Intel chairman Omar Ishrak calling for immediate action to boost the company’s position as a major provider of processor chips for PCs and data centers. The New York-based fund has amassed a nearly $1 billion stake in Intel, according to people familiar with the matter.
Pressmaster/Shutterstock.com
Here are the Stocks Billionaires are Buying and Selling These Days (BizJournals.com)
In a volatile market year, WalletHub researched what stocks the big money hedge funds have been buying and selling recently. Warren Buffett’s biggest buy at Berkshire Hathaway was Apple Inc. (AAPL) and his biggest sale was of Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC). See the list below for more of the biggest buys and biggest sales, respectively, by billionaires and their hedge funds according to WalletHub research: Carl Ichan, Ichan Enterprises, Xerox Holdings Corp. (XRX), Caesars Entertainment Inc. (CZR).
Jim Rogers Warns Stock Bubble will Grow in 2021: “I’ve Seen This Movie Before” (Marketplace.org)
American investor Jim Rogers is perhaps most famous for having retired aged 37 to travel around the world after having made his fortune from the Quantum hedge fund he co-founded with billionaire George Soros. For the last decade or so, he’s been living in Singapore with his family — part of a long-term bet on the future of Asia as the source of global growth and as a result, made sure his two children became fluent in Mandarin and Chinese culture. In an interview for “Marketplace Morning Report” from the BBC World Service, he issued a note of caution about market conditions but said iron ore, copper, silver and gold remain strong bets as we close out an unpredictable and volatile year.
Stock-Picking Hedge Funds Land Investors Double-Digit Gains in 2020 (Reuters)
(Reuters) – The average hedge fund underperformed the wider stock market in 2020 but saw less volatility while stock-picking funds got a lift from technology and stay-at-home shares in a year beset by a pandemic and uncertainty around the U.S. election. Hedge funds, which aim to protect assets in market downturns and have faced criticism for many years for high fees and lacklustre returns, in 2020 showed a divergence in performance.
Hedge Funds had their Best Month Since 2009. They’re Still Not Keeping up with the Stock Market (Market Watch)
Hedge funds had their best month in over a decade in November, but continue to perform worse than the broader market, once again raising questions about the value of expensive active investment management. Data from hedge fund tracker Eurekahedge released Tuesday shows that globally, hedge funds of all strategies returned 4.49% in November. That was the best monthly showing since May 2009, when they returned 5.0%.
Nephila Gets Allocation from Blackstone Multi-Strategy Fund (Artemis.bm)
Nephila Capital, the largest dedicated manager of insurance and reinsurance linked securities, has been given an allocation for its sub-advisory role on one of giant asset manager Blackstone Group’s multi-strategy investment funds. Nephila Capital has been a sub-advisor to the Blackstone Alternative Multi-Strategy Fund for a number of years, but hasn’t actually managed an allocation from the fund for some time.
Tuesday 12/29 Insider Buying Report: IQV, UIHC (Nasdaq.com)
At IQVIA Holdings, a filing with the SEC revealed that on Thursday, Director John G. Danhakl bought 63,451 shares of IQV, for a cost of $176.95 each, for a total investment of $11.23M. IQVIA Holdings is trading off about 0.5% on the day Tuesday. This purchase marks the first one filed by Danhakl in the past year. And at United Insurance Holdings, there was insider buying on Thursday, by Director Michael Hogan who bought 27,000 shares for a cost of $5.97 each, for a trade totaling $161,080. Before this latest buy, Hogan purchased UIHC on 7 other occasions during the past year, for a total cost of $272,514 at an average of $6.47 per share. United Insurance Holdings Corp is trading up about 4.7% on the day Tuesday. Investors can bag UIHC at a price even lower than Hogan did, with the stock changing hands as low as $5.70 in trading on Tuesday — that’s 4.5% under Hogan’s purchase price.
Renesola (SOL) CFO Capital Management Shah Sold $19 million of Shares (Guru Focus)
CFO of Renesola, Capital Management Shah, sold 1,864,266 shares of SOL on 12/28/2020 at an average price of $10.18 a share. The total sale was $19 million. ReneSola Ltd is a leading global manufacturer of solar wafers and photovoltaic modules. It offers virgin polysilicon, monocrystalline and multi crystalline solar wafers and photovoltaic (PV) cells and modules.
The Shareholder of Renesola (NYSE: SOL) is Selling Shares (Analyst Ratings)
Yesterday, the Shareholder of Renesola (SOL), Shah Capital Managem, sold shares of SOL for $18.98M. Following Shah Capital Managem’s last SOL Sell transaction on March 24, 2020, the stock climbed by 11.5%. This is Managem’s first Sell trade following 4 Buy transactions. The company has a one-year high of $12.00 and a one-year low of $0.85. SOL’s market cap is $1.05 billion and the company has a P/E ratio of -11.20. The Company has a Price to Book ratio of 11.82.
Marriott International Inc (MAR) President & CEO Arne M Sorenson Sold $12.9 million of Shares (Guru Focus)
President & CEO of Marriott International Inc, Arne M Sorenson, sold 100,000 shares of MAR on 12/28/2020 at an average price of $128.72 a share. The total sale was $12.9 million. Marriott International Inc is an operator, franchisor and licensor of hotels and timeshare properties under different brand names. It also operates and develops residential properties and provides services to home/condominium owner associations.
SEC Obtains Emergency Asset Freeze, Charges Crypto Fund Manager with Fraud (HedgeCo.net)
(HedgeCo.Net) The Securities and Exchange Commission has announced that it filed an emergency action and obtained an order imposing an asset freeze and other emergency relief against Virgil Capital LLC and its affiliated companies in connection with an alleged securities fraud relating to Virgil Capital’s flagship cryptocurrency trading fund, Virgil Sigma Fund LP. The Commission’s action alleges that the fraud was directed by Stefan Qin, an Australian citizen and part-time resident of New York, who owns and controls Virgil Capital and its affiliated companies. According to the SEC’s complaint, Qin and his entities have been defrauding investors in the Sigma Fund since at least 2018 by making material misrepresentations about the fund’s strategy, assets, and financial condition.
