Hedge Fund Confounds Market Rout With 82% Gain (Bloomberg)
Boaz Weinstein’s main hedge fund gained 82% in the first quarter, as many of his peers struggled to navigate their way through the worst turbulence since the global financial crisis. Weinstein’s Saba Capital Management, which earlier this month had $2.2 billion of assets, extended its climb from earlier in the year. Bets on credit default swaps and derivative trades on companies in the retail and energy sectors had already seen the fund rise rapidly in February.
Bill Ackman Says Accusations He Tried to Drive Down Market in Interview are ‘Absurd’ (CNBC)
Pershing Square Capital manager Bill Ackman defended his emotional CNBC appearance last week after his fund announced a few days later that it made more than $2 billion on bets against the markets. The investor warned in the interview that “hell is coming” and that hotel stocks could go to zero. “Shortly after the show, I heard that some had interpreted my remarks as being very bearish on the market,” Ackman told investors on Thursday. “The idea that my appearance pushed the market down an additional 4% that day is absurd.”
Allianz Global Investors Liquidates Two Hedge Funds (The Wall Street Journal)
Allianz Global Investors is liquidating two hedge funds after they took heavy losses in recent weeks on options trades. An Allianz Global Investors spokesman said the two funds, Structured Alpha 1000 and Structured Alpha 1000 Plus, had been net buyers of puts, or options giving the holder the right to sell an asset at a predetermined price in the future.
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Hedge Funds Suffered Losses As Index Rebalancing Trade Went Awry (Forbes)
It was the hedge fund equivalent of the cancellation of the popular Coachella music festival. With the virus pandemic impacting financial markets on March 12, S&P Dow Jones Indices postponed the scheduled rebalancing of hundreds of equity indexes, setting off a stampede among computer-driven hedge fund operations that had been preparing for the event. For years during the longest bull market in history, Wall Street banks and hedge funds made big profits by anticipating the moves of stock index mutual funds and exchange traded funds, often held by ordinary Americans. But the March cancellation of scheduled rebalancing by major index providers hit some traders conducting arbitrage trades around them with large losses, people familiar with the trade say.
Swedish Hedge Fund Bodenholm Shutters After Brummer Pulls the Plug (Hedge Week)
Swedish hedge fund firm Bodenholm Capital is to close after Brummer & Partners, one of the major investors in its funds, announced its decision to withdraw capital. Bodenholm One, a long/short equity hedge fund whose portfolio is built around fundamental stock analysis, is one of several strategies offered on Brummer & Partners’ flagship Brummer Multi-Strategy vehicle. BMS has invested in Bodenholm since the latter’s inception in September 2015, and is understood to have held a stake of more than 40 per cent. “For some time we have had a dialogue with Bodenholm about the fund’s management and risk where it has now emerged that the manager and parts of the management organisation intend to leave Bodenholm,” Mikael Spångberg, Brummer’s CEO and portfolio manager, said on Thursday.
Norway’s Sovereign Wealth Fund Selects New Chief Executive (AI-CIO.com)
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund – the largest in the world – has chosen a hedge fund operator to take over the system. Nicolai Tangen, a Norwegian who is the London-based chief executive at AKO Capital, will head Norges Bank Investment Management, starting in September. The firm runs the Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), the sovereign wealth fund valued at nearly $1 trillion. “Tangen has built up one of Europe’s leading investment firms and has delivered very good financial results as an international investment manager,” said Øystein Olsen, chair of the executive board.
Coronavirus Obsolete List of Hedge Funds (PresStories.com)
Hedge fund managers killed in 2019, only to test themselves when the coronavirus struck. The institutional investor revealed this week his “rich list” of hedge fund titans, based on 2019 returns. At the top of the list were many usual suspects, including quantum trader Jim Simons, who gained about $ 1.8 billion as the Dow Jones industrial average climbed 22%. But that was before the coronavirus upset the world – and the stock market -. Now, industry insiders say, some blankets are struggling to keep money from flowing.
Friday 3/27 Insider Buying Report: WTM, ORCL (Nasdaq.com)
At White Mountains Insurance Group, a filing with the SEC revealed that on Tuesday, Director Morgan W. Davis bought 1,050 shares of WTM, at a cost of $757.61 each, for a total investment of $795,486. So far Davis is in the green, up about 23.3% on their buy based on today’s trading high of $933.95. White Mountains Insurance Group is trading off about 3.6% on the day Friday. This buy marks the first one filed by Davis in the past year. And on Monday, Director Charles W. Moorman bought $452,300 worth of Oracle, buying 10,000 shares at a cost of $45.23 each. Before this latest buy, Moorman made one other buy in the past twelve months, purchasing $971,862 shares at a cost of $48.59 a piece. Oracle is trading down about 1.2% on the day Friday. Moorman was up about 11.9% on the buy at the high point of today’s trading session, with ORCL trading as high as $50.62 in trading on Friday.
A Director at The Middleby (NASDAQ: MIDD) is Buying Shares (Analyst Ratings)
Yesterday, a Director at The Middleby (MIDD), Chapin Sarah Palisi, bought shares of MIDD for $75.18K. This recent transaction increases Chapin Sarah Palisi’s holding in the company by 16.78% to a total of $387.7K. In addition to Chapin Sarah Palisi, 6 other MIDD executives reported Buy trades in the last month.
Salesforce.com Inc (CRM) Chair of the Board & CEO Marc Benioff Sold $3.1 million of Shares (Guru Focus)
Chair of the Board & CEO of Salesforce.com Inc., Marc Benioff, sold 20,000 shares of CRM on 03/26/2020 at an average price of $152.76 a share. The total sale was $3.1 million. Salesforce.com Inc is a software-as-a-service company that provides enterprise cloud computing solutions, offering social and mobile cloud apps and platform services, as well as professional services to facilitate the adoption of its solutions.
MoveOn Pushing to Oust Burr Over Alleged Insider Trading on Coronavirus (Washington Times)
MoveOn has waged a new attack campaign against Sen. Richard Burr for allegedly profiting off of non-public information before the stock market cratered in response to the coronavirus outbreak. Mr. Burr is not up for reelection until 2022, but the progressive ad campaign on Facebook and at the Raleigh News & Observer aims to force North Carolina Republican from office immediately. The ads feature a black-and-white photograph of Mr. Burr with one hand colored red to show he was caught red-handed and brand him a “pandemic profiteer.” Mr. Burr, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, reportedly sold approximately $1.7 million in stocks after learning of the coronavirus’s potentially calamitous impact before such information available to him became public knowledge. He also reportedly shared warnings with private donors while publicly espousing America’s preparedness to combat the virus.
Rite Aid Regional VP Settles SEC Walgreens Insider Trading Suit (Bloomberg Law)
A Rite Aid Corp. regional vice president agreed to pay the SEC almost $186,700 on Thursday to end an insider trading lawsuit connected to the company’s plan to merge with Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. David M. Mahan, who has worked for Rite Aid since 1984, avoided more than $87,000 in losses when he offloaded stock ahead of the news the the planned merger wouldn’t close by late January 2017 as expected, the Securities and Exchange Commission said in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
Insider Trading, If True of Lawmakers, Must be Punished (Sungazette.com)
Millions of dollars in stock transactions on behalf of five U.S. senators have raised serious questions about their ethics – and whether they broke laws against insider trading. Clearly, the matter needs to be investigated, but not as a witch hunt with the preconceived notion that someone must be guilty of wrongdoing. If the senators did what they are being accused by some of doing – using information about COVID-19 they received because of their positions to profit or avoid stock market losses – the very minimum punishment ought to be removal from office. Much preferred would be prosecution.
