Chief Executive of Crispin Odey’s Boutique Resigns (Portfolio-Adviser)
The chief executive of Odey Asset Management has resigned, Portfolio Adviser has learned, marking the second senior departure from Crispin Odey’s hedge fund business in a month. Filings from Companies House show Tim Pearey was terminated as a member on 24 March after two decades at the business. As of yet, Odey AM has not named a successor. Having split the CEO role with Odey AM’s eponymous founder for many years, in November 2020 Pearey became the boutique’s sole boss months after Odey was charged by the Crown Prosecution Service over an alleged indecent assault. He was ultimately acquitted.
Hearst Connecticut Ramps Up Coverage of Hartford County, Home of Alden’s Hartford Courant (Poynter.org)
Hearst’s Connecticut operation is adding 13 new positions — 11 of them journalists — and ramping up coverage of Hartford County, the home base of The Hartford Courant. The Courant is one of the Tribune Publishing papers bought last summer by hedge fund Alden Global Capital. Hearst’s move is not framed as a news-war attack on the Courant, but the company did offer a hint of that.
Cautiously Optimistic (Hedge Nordic)
Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – Before Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, the world’s immediate – economic – problem was surging inflation. The extensive economic consequences of the war in Ukraine are increasing the risk of stagflation, slowing economic growth accompanied by rising inflation, according to Taner Pikdöken, portfolio manager at Atlant Fonder. “My concern right now is that the world economy is facing a period of rising and residual inflation at the same time as we are experiencing declining growth,” says Atlant Fonder’s Taner Pikdöken.
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Here’s the 23-Page Pitch Deck that Convinced Billionaire Jamie Dinan to Bet Millions on Biometric Security Company authID.ai (Business Insider)
Publicly traded biometric security company authID.ai thought it had locked its working capital in for the next two years last Monday. With a stock issuance, convertible notes, and a $10 million credit facility from an existing investor, the software-as-a-service firm announced it had $22.5 million to work with in a press release on March 21.
Cathie Wood has been a Magnet for Criticism. She Blames Her Contrarian Views, Not Her Gender (CNBC)
It’s hard to talk about the topic of women in investing without mentioning Cathie Wood. The founder, CEO and chief investment officer of Ark Investment Management was the first woman to claim the title of manager of the largest actively managed fund. Yet, when Wood reflects on her career, she said she attributes any professional marginalization to her contrarian views rather than her gender. On any given day, she is rarely reminded that she is a woman, Wood told CNBC in a recent interview.
This Tiny Start-Up Might One Day Take Over the Hedge Fund Industry, and Even Surpass Mighty Renaissance Technologies. (The Motley Fool)
Many years ago, there was a brilliant mathematician named Jim Simons. He taught math at MIT and Harvard and spent some years working for the National Security Agency (NSA) using math to break codes. Then he started using math to figure out price moves in the stock market. He created a hedge fund, Renaissance Technologies, and hired a bunch of mathematicians and data scientists. They didn’t know anything about the stock market, but they were really good at pattern recognition and finding anomalies in data. His hedge firm was unbelievably successful, and Simons became a multi-billionaire.
Professional Investors Believe Digital Assets will Become Mainstream, Says Survey by Digital Assets Hedge Fund Nickel (Hedge Week)
More than eight out of ten (84 per cent) professional investors believe digital assets will become mainstream, with just 3 per cent saying this will not happen and 13 per cent claiming it is too early to say. This is according to new research from London-based digital assets hedge fund Nickel Digital Asset Management (Nickel). The survey of 200 institutional investors and wealth managers from across seven countries who collectively manage around USD329 billion in assets, reveals 81 per cent believe that digital assets – in particular DeFi protocols – are emerging as an important disruptive technology for traditional finance. Some 56 per cent strongly agree with this view.
Burford Capital Raises $360m for New Private Investment Fund (Opalesque)
Global finance and asset manager Burford Capital Limited announced its new $360 million Burford Advantage Master Fund. According to a media release from the asset management firm focused on law, the Advantage Fund focuses on lower risk, lower return pre-settlement litigation investments than we include in our core legal finance portfolio, targeting matters expected to produce returns in the 12-20% IRR range. The litigation financing provider said the fund fills the gap between the Burford Alternative Income Fund, which focuses on lower return post-settlement investments, and Burford’s core business.
Tuesday 3/29 Insider Buying Report: GWRS, KEYS (Nasdaq.com)
At Global Water Resources, a filing with the SEC revealed that on Thursday, Director Andrew M. Cohn purchased 36,667 shares of GWRS, for a cost of $16.00 each, for a total investment of $586,672. Cohn was up about 1.6% on the buy at the high point of today’s trading session, with GWRS trading as high as $16.26 in trading on Tuesday. Global Water Resources is trading up about 0.4% on the day Tuesday. Before this latest buy, Cohn bought GWRS at 11 other times during the past year, for a total investment of $1.16M at an average of $16.21 per share. And also on Thursday, Director Kevin A. Stephens purchased $158,924 worth of Keysight Technologies, purchasing 1,000 shares at a cost of $158.92 a piece. This buy marks the first one filed by Stephens in the past year. Keysight Technologies is trading up about 2.8% on the day Tuesday. So far Stephens is in the green, up about 4.8% on their buy based on today’s trading high of $166.52.
SEC Charges Seven California Residents in Insider Trading Ring (HedgeCo.net)
(HedgeCo.Net) The Securities and Exchange Commission has announced insider trading charges against three software engineers employed at Twilio, Inc., a San Francisco-based cloud computing communications company, and four family members and friends for allegedly generating more than $1 million in collective profits by insider trading ahead of the company’s positive first quarter 2020 earnings announcement on May 6, 2020. According to the SEC’s complaint, friends Hari Sure, Lokesh Lagudu and Chotu Pulagam were software engineers at Twilio and had access to various databases relevant to the company’s reporting of revenue.
