Hedge Fund Greenlight Capital’s Strong Fourth Quarter Gains Lift 2020 Return to 5.2%: Letter (Reuters)
BOSTON (Reuters) – Greenlight Capital ended 2020 with a 5.2% gain thanks to a dramatic fourth quarter comeback when bets on a homebuilder, jet leasing company and home security services company turned into a 25% return, the firm said in a letter to investors on Thursday. The hedge fund, run by David Einhorn, lagged far behind the broader S&P 500 index’s 18.4% gain but celebrated its late year surge which it described as “the best quarterly result in Greenlight’s history.” Reuters obtained a copy of the letter.
Bridgewater’s CEO on Inequality, Uncertainty, and Polarization (Bloomberg)
David McCormick, the chief executive officer of Bridgewater Associates, isn’t a typical hedge fund honcho. He’s a former Army Ranger who cleared minefields in the first Gulf War and a Princeton Ph.D. who served as President George W. Bush’s undersecretary of the Treasury. He now runs the company Ray Dalio founded, which manages $140 billion, much of that for pension funds. How do you reconcile the political situation with the state of financial markets?
Third SPAC ETF Launch Taps Into Blank-Check Company Boom (The Wall Street Journal)
Morgan Creek Capital’s Mark Yusko is teaming up with former Credit Suisse CEO Brady Dougan. Wall Street is launching a third exchange-traded fund that invests in special-purpose acquisition companies, accelerating a rush to cash in on investors’ enthusiasm for so-called blank-check firms. The hedge fund Morgan Creek Capital Management and the financial-technology company Exos Financial plan to launch the SPAC ETF on Tuesday, the companies said. The new Morgan Creek-Exos SPAC Originated ETF will trade under the ticker SPXZ and consist of a mix of firms that recently went public by merging with a SPAC plus shell companies that are still seeking startups to take public.
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Billionaire Investor Seth Klarman Lambasts the Fed for Distorting Markets – and Says Tesla’s Stock has Surged ‘Seemingly Beyond All Reason’ (Business Insider)
A billionaire investor heralded as “the next Warren Buffett” blasted the Federal Reserve and Treasury in a private letter this week, accusing the duo of disrupting the stock market and putting investors at risk. Seth Klarman told clients of his Baupost hedge fund that investors are behaving as if risks have “simply vanished” due to rock-bottom interest rates and wave after wave of government stimulus, the Financial Times reported.
A Select Year for Alcur (Hedge Nordic)
Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – In 2020, the five top-performing Nordic hedge funds all delivered gains of at least 50 percent for the 12 months ended December 31. In third place at the end of 2020 was Alcur Select, which posted a return of about 70 percent, almost 20 percentage points higher than its first-place finish for 2019. The long-biased small-cap-focused equity fund managed by a Stockholm-based team led by Wilhelm Gruvberg has delivered a cumulative return of over 170 percent since launching in May of 2018, corresponding to an annualized return of 45 percent.
Starboard Seeks to Take Control of Corteva Board, Oust CEO (The Wall Street Journal)
Starboard Value LP is seeking to take control of agricultural giant Corteva Inc.’s board and replace its chief executive, according to people familiar with the matter. Starboard, led by CEO Jeff Smith, has privately nominated eight directors to Corteva’s 12-person board, the people said. Starboard is aiming to oust Corteva Chief Executive Jim Collins over what the activist says is mediocre performance. It has an unnamed replacement in mind.
