Cliff Asness on AMC Stock “Ape” Investors: “Paranoid Investing Death Cult” (The Street)
AQR Capital Management co-founder Cliff Asness, who has short positions in AMC stock, keeps poking the “apes.” Hedge fund manager Cliff Asness is one of the best-known AMC bears. Asness has an antagonistic relationship with AMC investors, recently calling them a “paranoid investing death cult.” In 2022, AMC short sellers have been winning — but shorting the stock involves high borrow fees.
Carl Icahn’s Big GameStop Short Hasn’t Kept Him From Losing Money (Institutional Investor)
Icahn’s bearishness in 2021 cost him more than $1.3 billion — despite lofty gains from shorting the meme stock. Carl Icahn’s big short of GameStop — the famous meme stock that took down hedge fund Melvin Capital — looks to have been quite profitable. But it hasn’t kept him from losing money in Icahn Enterprises’ internal hedge fund over the past two years, even when the big gains were made in 2021. Last week, Bloomberg reported that Icahn put on his GameStop short at the peak of its trading frenzy in early 2021.
Oz Senate Defeat Opens Door to Ex-Hedge Fund CEO McCormick for Another Run (Bloomberg)
When politicians, business and civic leaders descend on New York City’s Waldorf Astoria on Friday for the annual Pennsylvania Society gathering, Democrats in the crowd will be celebrating the first time in 75 years that the state’s voters have not elected at least one Republican senator. David McCormick, the former chief executive officer of hedge fund giant Bridgewater Associates, will be in attendance, too. His fellow Republicans are pushing for him to go up against three-term Senator Bob Casey in 2024 to restore the Commonwealth’s split in the chamber. McCormick himself is weighing another run, people familiar with the matter said.
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
Hedge Fund Billionaire Bill Ackman Walks Back Endorsement Of Questionable Cryptocurrency (Forbes)
On November 20, amid renewed scrutiny of the crypto sector following the bankruptcy filing of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX cryptocurrency exchange, hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman issued a 19-tweet thread that hailed cryptocurrency’s “potential for beneficent societal impact.” His crypto paean singled out two specific blockchain projects-Helium and Dimo–as examples of “how a token could build intrinsic value over time.” HeliumHELIUM 0.0%, a Web3 project that bills itself as a decentralized network of internet hotspots, had created what Ackman described as a “a global Wi-Fi network” used by e-scooter company Lime. The hedge fund investor explained that HNT, Helium’s native token, benefitted from Helium’s “global network of 974k hotspots,” and was positioned to become “a valued commodity” amid growth in network participation.
Ken Griffin Finds Buyer for Park Tower Condo He Listed for $13M (Chicago Tribune)
Billionaire Ken Griffin has found a buyer for an 8,000-square-foot full-floor condominium on the 66th floor of the Park Tower building on the Near North Side, which he has had for sale for $13.25 million. If Griffin, who recently relocated his hedge fund firm, Citadel, and his own family to south Florida after complaining about crime in Chicago, ends up selling the Park Tower condo at or below his asking price, he would take a loss on the unit, which he bought for $15 million in 2012.
