Dan Loeb on His Top Winning Plays and How He Dodged the GameStop Short Squeeze (CNBC)
Third Point’s Dan Loeb, who finished 2020 with a solid 20% return, said his hedge fund was able to dodge steep losses caused by the GameStop speculative trading mania that burned some of his peers. The hedge fund manager also revealed his top performers in the fourth quarter that propelled the fund to the good year, according to his latest investor letter obtained by CNBC.
Hedge Fund Indaba Pushes Benefitfocus to Put Itself Up for Sale (Reuters)
BOSTON (Reuters) – Indaba Capital is pushing benefit management software company Benefitfocus Inc. to put itself up for sale after years of poor returns and high turnover in the executive suite, according to a letter the hedge fund sent to the company’s board on Thursday. Indaba, which owns 9.6% of Benefitfocus’ stock, is dialing up the pressure after weeks of private negotiations that ended when the company last month named a new director and said an independent chairman will be appointed at the annual meeting.
Bitcoin Bull Mike Novogratz Compared Dogecoin to GameStop – and Warned Buyers could ‘Lose Lots of Money’ (Business Insider)
The Dogecoin craze started as a joke, but so many people have invested in the cryptocurrency that serious cash is now on the line, Mike Novogratz told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” this week. “Dogecoin reminds me a lot of GameStop,” the Galaxy Digital CEO and founder said. “It was funny for a little bit, but now it’s at a market valuation where people are going to lose lots of money in Doge.”
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Famed Hedge Fund Firm CQS Is Surviving — But Not Because of Its Hedge Funds (Institutional Investor)
For a man whose flagship hedge fund was down more than 50 percent at one point last year, Michael Hintze sounds surprisingly upbeat. On a chilly winter afternoon, Hintze, 67, phones from London to talk about his firm’s reckoning this past spring, a time when the flagship fund’s structured credit instruments went terribly, horribly wrong and the firm’s positioning amid market turmoil sent that and one other fund plummeting to their worst-ever losses – wiping out billions of assets in mere weeks.
Ackman, Griffin, Coleman Are Among Hedge Fund Bigwigs Who Cleaned Up in 2020 (AI-CIO.com)
Some hedge funds might have run into rough sledding in early 2021 in the winter storm over GameStop, when their shorting attempts failed. But in 2020, the top hedge operators romped, especially for their own bank accounts. The 15 leading hedge fund honchos personally collected $23.2 billion last year, according to Bloomberg’s annual estimates. After all, a year like that, with the stock market’s dizzying fall and rise, along with gut-wrenching volatility throughout, is a target-rich environment for adept hedge funds.
Ray Dalio on Why Bitcoin is Zooming and Why it Faces Hurdles as an Alternative Asset (MSN)
Bitcoin is the talk of the global financial markets as the digital currency is seeing a huge trading frenzy. With Tesla acquiring $1.5 billion of the cryptocurrency, Bitcoin’s price has zoomed into the stratosphere. One Bitcoin is now worth about $45,500, higher by 57% in 2021; even more than 25 ounces of gold. Just before the pandemic struck in March last year, the digital currency was trading even below $5,000.
Falcon Hedge Fund Platform Offers First Loss Capital to Startup Fund Managers (Hedge Week)
Falcon Investment Management a multi-manager hedge fund platform, has launched its first loss program to support early-stage hedge fund managers with seed and acceleration capital. The program is designed to align interest between investors and managers. Through first loss structure, managers receive higher incentive fees in exchange for sharing potential losses with investors resulting a better alignment of interests. Participating fund managers in the program benefit in three ways.
Hedge Fund Manager Keith Meister Explains Why MGM is Undervalued, Moves Stock Higher (CNBC)
A high profile hedge fund manager told CNBC on Wednesday that the booming sports gaming industry could help the market overlook the pandemic’s hit to one of the world’s most famous casino brands. Keith Meister, managing partner and CIO of Corvex Capital and a board member of MGM Resorts, explained on CNBC’s “Halftime Report” why he is bullish on the company. MGM will report its latest quarterly results after the bell on Wednesday.
Citadel’s Ken Griffin Expected to Testify at House GameStop Hearing (Bloomberg)
Ken Griffin, Citadel LLC’s billionaire founder, is expected to testify next week at a House hearing on wild market swings in shares of GameStop Corp. and other stocks, according to three people familiar with the matter. It’s also anticipated that Robinhood Financial Chief Executive Officer Vladimir Tenev will appear to answer questions about the role that the firm’s popular online trading app played in the tumult, said the people, asking not to be named before a formal announcement. House Financial Services Committee Chair Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, has said she wants the panel to hear from hedge fund Melvin Capital Management, as well.
Formfactor Inc (FORM) CEO Mike Slessor Sold $2.3 million of Shares (Guru Focus)
CEO of Formfactor Inc, Mike Slessor, sold 50,000 shares of FORM on 02/10/2021 at an average price of $46.18 a share. The total sale was $2.3 million. FormFactor Inc is a technology solutions provider. Its core business involves manufacture of advanced semiconductor probe card products. FormFactor Inc has a market cap of $3.7 billion; its shares were traded at around $47.840000 with a P/E ratio of 48.31 and P/S ratio of 5.44.
How COVID-19 Has Shaped the Future of Distressed Debt Investing (Preqin)
The events of 2020 drew a record number of distressed debt funds to the market, while other funds have pivoted toward opportunistic or special situations strategies. How will the sizable pipeline of distressed funds impact the market in 2021? We are currently witnessing imbalance between the supply of distressed debt opportunities in more liquid leveraged loans and high-yield bonds and demand for each of those assets. Distressed debt funds raised a lot of capital in 2020 and mostly chased the same liquid opportunities, but the yields on these opportunities fell after markets rallied from April. Though opportunities will continue to arise while the pandemic prevents economies from returning to ‘normal,’ we expect this imbalance to continue through early 2021.
A Director at NextGen Healthcare (NASDAQ: NXGN) is Selling Shares (Analyst Ratings)
On February 9, a Director at NextGen Healthcare (NXGN), Lance Rosenzweig, sold shares of NXGN for $496K. Following Lance Rosenzweig’s last NXGN Sell transaction on August 12, 2020, the stock climbed by 6.6%. In addition to Lance Rosenzweig, one other NXGN executive reported Sell trades in the last month.
