Soros Donation to Halt Brexit Causes Storm in Britain (Reuters)
LONDON (Reuters) – News that billionaire financier George Soros is a backer of a campaign group seeking to keep Britain in the EU added fire to Britain’s Brexit debate on Thursday, with supporters of quitting the bloc accusing opponents of plotting a “coup”. The Best of Britain campaign group confirmed it had received 400,000 pounds from Soros. Soros, best known in Britain for earning billions betting against the pound in the early 1990s, is the target of a hostile media campaign by the nationalist government in his native Hungary and a hate figure for rightwing campaigners in eastern Europe and the United States.
Hedge Fund Kerrisdale Goes Short Eastman Kodak; Snap Snaps Back – ICYMI (TheStreet)
Kerrisdale Capital released a letter on Thursday, announcing a short position in 138-year-old Eastman Kodak (KODK) , which has more than doubled since announcing its own cryptocurrency KodakCoin. No, this isn’t worth mentioning just because I doubted the concept when it was first announced in early January, but because Kerrisdale raises some intriguing, if not hilarious, notions about KodakCoin and Eastman Kodak’s new photo rights program.
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Why Illinois’ Richest Person, Citadel CEO Ken Griffin, Sees Some Rough Weather Ahead (Chicago Tribune)
When the richest person in Illinois shares his opinions about the economy and stock market, it’s worth listening – especially when you consider what’s been going on this week. Ken Griffin, founder and CEO of hedge fund Citadel Investment Group, who has an estimated net worth of $8.5 billion, recently posted online an open letter to the hedge fund’s investors that outlines his views on 2018’s economic landscape and more. He’s worried about some “dark clouds” on the horizon and Griffin, like Omaha, Neb.-based superinvestor Warren Buffett, usually knows the score.
Is This Obscure Wall Street Invention Responsible for the Market Selloff? (The Wall Street Journal)
The surge in market volatility this week, after a long period of tranquility, left investors seeking a culprit. Critics began pointing to an obscure investment strategy pioneered by the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates. So-called risk-parity funds aim to reduce the danger from a collapse in any one market by limiting bets on more volatile assets like stocks and commodities and using leverage to load up on safer assets like government bonds.
This $12.5 Billion Macro Hedge Fund Is Totally Killing It (Bloomberg)
Jeffrey Talpins’s hedge fund Element Capital Management jumped 10 percent in January, extending gains from 2017 on the back of investments in equity and interest rate markets, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The $12.5 billion macro hedge fund revamped its portfolio in late 2017 on a wager that an overhaul of U.S. tax laws would pass. That allowed it to take advantage of the surge in equity markets, which helped erase previous losses and led to a gain of 5.5 percent on the year, said the person, who asked not to be identified.
