Dan Sundheim’s D1 Shakes Off Its $4 Billion Reddit-Fueled Fiasco (Bloomberg)
It was the kind of moment that would normally sink a hedge fund: Dan Sundheim was on Zoom, apologizing to clients for losing $4 billion in a single month. He ticked off strategy changes, noted he wasn’t going to dock his team’s pay and then headed back to work. Now, mere weeks later, the episode is behind him. Sundheim has recouped about 90% of what he lost in January when retail investors attacked his short bets on the likes of GameStop Corp. That recovery has put his D1 Capital Partners back into one of the most rapid ascents ever seen in money management.
AQR has Lost More than a Third of its Assets Since the End of 2017, But Cliff Asness’ Firm had a Big First Quarter (Business Insider)
Quants had a tough 2020, but Cliff Asness‘ AQR has been struggling longer than that owing to a long drought for its value-focused strategies. But a person close to the firm said the money manager is turning things around this year. The Greenwich-based systematic manager, which runs a number of hedge funds and mutual funds, has lost more than a third of its assets — nearly 38% — since the end of 2017, according to a report prepared by consultant Callan for the Marin County Employees’ Retirement Association.
Hedge Fund Assets Hit Record $3.8 Trillion in First Quarter (Reuters)
TORONTO (Reuters) – Global hedge fund assets rose to more than $3.8 trillion in March 2021, driven by the best first-quarter performance in 21 years and more investors putting cash to work with the industry, according to data from Hedge Fund Research (HFR). Hedge funds added another $201 billion and gained an average of 6% in the first three months of the year, according to the data.
Pixabay/Public Domain
Hedge Fund Performance Update: March 2021 (Preqin)
The Preqin All-Strategies Hedge Fund benchmark returned +2.32% in March, building on February’s 3.12% gain and pushing the 12-month return to +41.52%. This heatmap presents the hedge fund performance benchmarks for March 2021. Plus, the YTD and 12-month returns for all top-level strategies, structures, denominations, and size classifications.
U.S. Long/Short Hedge Fund Bets on Return of Value Stocks (Opalesque)
From the March downturn through the end of 2020, growth stocks delivered a 1.5x greater return than their value counterparts. In 2021, the tables have turned: value stocks are pulling away to lead the market while the growth sector is nearly flat YTD, reports Nasdaq. March 2021 also marks the first time in months where daily volume in the S&P 500 Value ETF (IVE) was higher than that of IVW, its growth counterpart, indicating interest is shifting into value stocks and related funds. From 2010 to 2020, the Russell 1000 Growth Index delivered an annualized return of around +17%, while the Russell 1000 Value Index annualized about +10%. But the growth index’s outperformance largely comes from technology stocks.
Best Nordic Equity Hedge Fund 2020 (Hedge Nordic)
Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – Accounting for more than one-third of the Nordic hedge fund industry, equity hedge funds face fierce competition in the race for the title of the “Best Nordic Equity Hedge Fund” at the Nordic Hedge Award. The wide range of approaches and varying degrees of net market exposure employed by these players make this contest more exciting and unpredictable. At 15:00 CET on Wednesday, HedgeNordic announced the winners and runners-up in the “Best Nordic Equity Hedge Fund” category supported by Northern Trust.
Hedge Fund Assets Soar to All-Time High, Fueled by Record Gains and Booming Investor Confidence (Hedge Week)
Global hedge fund industry assets swelled to a new record high of USD3.8 trillion in the first three months of 2021, as managers recorded their strongest quarter since 2000 and investors duly poured more capital into a broad selection of strategy types, with the biggest hedge funds still taking the largest slice of client money. Hedge Fund Research estimates that net asset inflows from allocators reached about USD6.1 billion between the start of January and the end of March. That brought total net new inflows since Q3 2020 to USD22.1 billion.
Quant Shops Show Performance Variances (Green Street)
Quantitative managers continue to show wide dispersions in their performance, preserving a trend that took hold in 2020. But even with returns all over the map, there’s little doubt that the group as a whole fared far better in the first quarter of 2020 than it did amid the coronavirus-related disruptions of a year earlier. Indeed, the HFRI Equity Hedge Quantitative Directional Index was up 3.1% from Jan. 1 to March 31, versus a 10.7% loss for the same period in 2020. Among the gainers was a $1.25 billion vehicle run by Hong Kong-based Qube Research & Technologies, with a first-quarter profit of 10.3%. That built on a full-year 2020 rise of 39%.
Hedge Fund Northlander is Raising Money to Bet on Carbon Price Surge (Bloomberg)
Northlander Commodity Advisors started a new fund to bet that carbon prices have nowhere to go but up. The London-based hedge fund is looking to raise as much as $100 million for the new fund in the next 12 months, Ulf Ek, Northlander’s chief investment officer, said in an interview. Within two years he hopes to grow the fund to $500 million.
Legendary Investor Bill Miller Says the Window is Closing on the SPAC Market, But Singles Out 2 Names that Remain Attractive (Business Insider)
Legendary investor Bill Miller thinks the SPAC craze may be nearing the end. Pushed by a frenzy of excitement from retail investors and a desire from many pre-revenue companies to take an easier path to public markets, SPACs have boomed in 2020 and 2021. “I think that game is largely winding down now,” Miller told CNBC on Tuesday. “Many of the SPACs that came public came at extraordinarily expensive valuations. But now some of them have corrected.”
HSBC’s Former Global Fixed Income Head Joins Hedge Fund Brevan Howard (Financial News)
The former global head of fixed income at HSBC has re-emerged at hedge fund Brevan Howard around a year after his exit. Elie El Hayek, a 23-year veteran of the UK lender, has joined Alan Howard’s hedge fund as a portfolio manager, more than 12 months after leaving the bank as it unveiled a sweeping overhaul of its business.
WeWork Vet Hired to Launch Two Sigma’s Real Estate Fund (The Real Deal)
The former head of WeWork’s real estate investment arm has joined the quantitative hedge fund Two Sigma to help launch its new property investment platform. Rich Gomel joined the data-centric hedge fund as chief investment officer for its new Two Sigma Real Estate platform, the company announced Wednesday.
Wednesday 4/21 Insider Buying Report: EYEN, CCEL (Nasdaq.com)
On Tuesday, Eyenovia’s , Stuart M. Grant, made a $293,663 buy of EYEN, purchasing 60,692 shares at a cost of $4.84 each. Eyenovia is trading up about 5.9% on the day Wednesday. Before this latest buy, Grant bought EYEN on 3 other occasions during the past year, for a total investment of $2.71M at an average of $2.82 per share. And at Cryo-cell, there was insider buying on Tuesday, by Chairman, Co-CEO David Portnoy who purchased 11,000 shares at a cost of $9.90 each, for a total investment of $108,900.
Springworks Therapeutics Inc (SWTX) CEO Saqib Islam Sold $4.3 million of Shares (Guru Focus)
CEO of Springworks Therapeutics Inc, Saqib Islam, sold 62,500 shares of SWTX on 04/20/2021 at an average price of $68.02 a share. The total sale was $4.3 million. Springworks Therapeutics Inc has a market cap of $3.33 billion; its shares were traded at around $67.890000 with and P/S ratio of 91.74.
A Director at Acme United (NYSE MKT: ACU) is Selling Shares (Analyst Ratings)
Today, a Director at Acme United (ACU), Susan Murphy, sold shares of ACU for $163.2K. Following Susan Murphy’s last ACU Sell transaction on March 05, 2021, the stock climbed by 4.5%. This is Murphy’s first Sell trade following 4 Buy transactions.
