Hindsight Capital’s 2020 Was Great. Wasn’t Yours? (Bloomberg)
As the miserable year of 2020 has almost reached its end, it is time to return to the offices of Hindsight Capital LLC. For those unfamiliar with the work of this great, albeit imaginary, hedge fund – which I visit every year at about this time – Hindsight Capital invests with the benefit of a style guaranteed to beat all others year after year: hindsight. All of its trades are placed at the beginning of the year, in full knowledge of what will happen.
Anthony Scaramucci’s Skybridge Capital Pumped About $182M in Bitcoin (Coin Speaker)
For asset managers including Skybridge Capital, an entry into the world of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies will serve as a wake-up call for existing clients to have a positive disposition towards BTC as well as the new cryptos that will be supported. In the wake of the institutional embrace of Bitcoin (BTC) and digital assets, Anthony Scaramucci’s Investment Management Company Skybridge Capital has reportedly invested as much as $182 million in the first-ever cryptocurrency. According to a CoinDesk report, Skybridge Capital has filed an application to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a hedge fund dubbed the Skybridge Bitcoin Fund LP which is set to launch in January 2021.
Human-Run Hedge Funds Trounce Quant Behemoths in Covid Year (Live Mint)
Overall, human-run funds put up some their best numbers in a decade in 2020, with several boldfaced names, including Tiger, Coatue and D1, posting returns in excess of 35%. Turns out, the hedge fund industry’s swashbucklers haven’t been made obsolete by the machines just yet.After years of being outgunned and outclassed by computer-driven quantitative strategies, human stock-pickers climbed back on top in 2020, helped by aggressive bets in technology and the flood of central bank money that buoyed markets. The dizzying gyrations of the pandemic-stricken year humbled even the most sophisticated of quants — notably behemoths Renaissance Technologies and Two Sigma — whose trading models were thrown off by swings their computers had never seen before.
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Hedge Fund Founder Ray Dalio Said Son’s Death Triggered Enormous ‘Pain and Reflection’ (Hartford Courant)
Ray Dalio, a philanthropist and founder of Bridgewater Associates, the Westport hedge fund that’s the world’s largest, said Wednesday he was unprepared for the death of his 42-year-old son, Devon, in a Dec. 17 car crash. In a posting, “My Journey and Reflections Following My Son’s Passing” on the career website LinkedIn, Dalio said the loss “triggered an enormous amount of pain and reflection.”
How Bill Ackman’s Hedge Fund Performed in 2020 (CNBC)
Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman is about to close the year firmly in the black. CNBC’s Leslie Picker breaks down Ackman’s solid 2020 performance.
Taking a Passive Approach to the Hedge-Fund Universe (Pensions&Investments)
Investing in hedge funds can be a daunting prospect, even for experienced institutional investors. We can attribute this to the breadth and complexity of the asset class, combined with the need for highly accurate market timing. At the same time, however, the potential for diversification benefits and returns make hedge funds very appealing. Are there any means by which non-specialist investors can access them as part of a diversified portfolio? The answer is yes, but to understand and compare the different options, we must first examine the difficulties in more detail.
Elliott Stake Complicates Rocket Internet’s Plan to Delist (Bloomberg)
Elliott Management Corp. has taken a 15.1% stake in Germany’s Rocket Internet SE in a potential challenge to the startup factory’s plan to delist its shares. Rocket’s founding Samwer brothers decided in September to take the company private after recent investments failed to match earlier successes such as Zalando, now one of Europe’s largest fashion retailers, and Lazada, a Southeast Asia-focused consumer electronics company.
Activist Hedge Fund Third Point Calls for Big Changes at Intel (CNBC)
Dan Loeb and Third Point are urging Intel to explore strategic alternatives via a letter that points to the company’s diminishing market share. CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” crew discuss.
Wednesday 12/30 Insider Buying Report: SPLP, NSYS (Nasdaq.com)
On Tuesday, Steel Partners Holdings’s Director, Eric P. Karros, made a $198,850 purchase of SPLP, buying 21,695 shares at a cost of $9.17 each. So far Karros is in the green, up about 27.4% on their purchase based on today’s trading high of $11.68. Steel Partners Holdings is trading up about 20.8% on the day Wednesday. And at Nortech Systems, there was insider buying on Monday, by CFO Christopher Dean Jones who bought 14,636 shares at a cost of $6.23 each, for a total investment of $91,188. Before this latest buy, Jones made one other purchase in the past year, buying $11,513 shares at a cost of $5.66 each. Nortech Systems is trading up about 26.6% on the day Wednesday. Jones was up about 32.1% on the purchase at the high point of today’s trading session, with NSYS trading as high as $8.23 in trading on Wednesday.
Bandwidth Inc (BAND) Chairman & CEO David A. Morken Sold $14.8 million of Shares (Guru Focus)
Chairman & CEO of Bandwidth Inc, David A. Morken, sold 82,909 shares of BAND on 12/24/2020 at an average price of $178.63 a share. The total sale was $14.8 million. Bandwidth Inc provides a cloud-based communications platform for enterprises in the United States. It offers solutions including software application programming interfaces for voice and text functionality.
A Director at ChemoCentryx (NASDAQ: CCXI) is Selling Shares (Analyst Ratings)
Yesterday, a Director at ChemoCentryx (CCXI), Thomas A. Edwards, sold shares of CCXI for $1.53M. Following Thomas A. Edwards’ last CCXI Sell transaction on May 18, 2016, the stock climbed by 57.0%. The company has a one-year high of $65.43 and a one-year low of $30.72. CCXI’s market cap is $4.29 billion and the company has a P/E ratio of -89.00. Currently, ChemoCentryx has an average volume of 296.65K.
SEC Charges Long Island City Man with Trading and Tipping Others as Part of Insider Trading Scheme (HedgeCo.net)
(HedgeCo.Net) The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Jason Peltz of Long Island City, New York with insider trading ahead of a media report about the potential acquisition of chemical manufacturer Ferro Corp. that caused the company’s stock price to climb. Peltz also tipped others to trade ahead of the news, for a collective total profit of approximately $1 million. According to the SEC’s complaint, Peltz used inside information to trade Ferro securities before a March 15, 2016 news media article that Ferro had received a takeover approach from a prominent private equity firm. The complaint alleges that Peltz placed his trades using accounts held in the names of others, including the account of a British Virgin Islands company. Peltz further leveraged the inside information by tipping several associates who all traded Ferro within days of Peltz.
