Citadel Silver Holding Exposes Rifts in WallStreetBets Army (Bloomberg)
Ken Griffin’s Citadel has once again found itself at the center of a WallStreetBets drama, this time over the firm’s holdings of silver. The precious metal has become a popular buying target for retail investors keen to inflict losses on hedge funds, after posts on WallStreetBets claimed the market was ripe for a short squeeze. Yet some members of the Reddit forum have responded with pleas to avoid the trade, saying Citadel stands to benefit as a major holder of the largest silver exchange-traded fund.
Ray Dalio Warns Janet Yellen About Perils of a Weaker Dollar (AI-CIO.com)
Ray Dalio hopes Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will steer clear of many pitfalls. Among them? Trusting that the US dollar will remain the world’s reserve currency, a warning many investors have already been sounding after the dollar lost value this past year. “I think the United States has gotten used to being the world’s reserve currency, which meant that they think that whatever we can sell the rest of the world, the world will buy and we’re not subject to constraints or that dynamic, so that concerns me a bit,” Dalio told the Washington Post on Friday.
Hedge Fund Manager Hit in GameStop Frenzy is Developing $44M Miami Mega-Mansion (Fox Business)
The hedge fund manager hit hardest by the GameStop trading frenzy is in the middle of a major redevelopment of a $44 million mega-mansion in Miami – despite his company losing $4.5 billion in the mania, according to a report. Short-seller Gabe Plotkin’s Melvin Capital Management lost 53 percent in January – ending the month with $8 billion in assets, down from roughly $12.5 billion – largely because of online trading propelled by the Reddit forum r/WallStreetBets.
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Hedge Fund Lobby Scolds those ‘Clapping with Glee’ at Losers in GameStop Frenzy (Financial News)
The chief executive of the London-based body that represents the interests of the global hedge fund industry warns it will be retail investors who will be nursing heavy losses once the dust has settled in the GameStop frenzy. Jack Inglis, who oversees the Alternative Investment Management Association — whose members manage more than $2tn collectively – wrote in a letter to members that “some retail investors who have been late to this party are very likely to end up getting hurt”.
Renaissance Quant Fund Slumps 9.5% in January Stock Upheaval (Bloomberg)
A Renaissance Technologies stock fund slumped in January, adding to the quant-investment giant’s woes after it suffered heavy losses in pandemic-hit markets. The Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund fell 9.5% in the month, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. That follows a 20% loss last year for the fund, which is the largest of three that the firm sells to outside investors.
“Hedge Funds are Back”: Veteran Investor Dixon Boardman Sees “Compelling Opportunities” Across Three Key Strategy Areas (Hedge Week)
Seasoned hedge fund investor Dixon Boardman, the founder and CEO of New York-based multi-manager group Optima Asset Management, is bullish on hedge funds for the year ahead – seeing compelling opportunities across several strategies after a year in which strong outperformance by many hedge funds has put alternatives firmly back on the radar of allocators around the world. Boardman, who has more than 30 years’ experience in hedge fund investing experience and is also vice chairman of Forbes Family Trust, highlights three key areas of opportunities that stood out last year and which he sees as continuing to offer ‘significant opportunity’ in 2021: Asia, especially China and India; healthcare; and concentrated ‘best ideas’ stock-picking by top long/short equity managers.
Hedge Fund Performance: 2020, Year of the Human Touch (IPE.com)
Diversification is back in favour for hedge funds and those with a downside protection mandate delivered during the crisis. Infectious diseases only just made it into the 2020 World Economic Forum’s risk impact list, yet the World Bank estimates that the pandemic caused global output to fall by 4.3% last year. So, when markets melted last March, did the $3trn (€2.5trn) hedge fund industry deliver? Hedge funds were down 11.55% in the first quarter and up 7.02% for the year, according to the HFRI Fund Weighted Composite index.
Monday 2/1 Insider Buying Report: TDY, RMT (nasdaq.com)
At Teledyne Technologies, a filing with the SEC revealed that on Friday, Executive Chairman Robert Mehrabian purchased 10,000 shares of TDY, for a cost of $366.05 each, for a total investment of $3.66M. Teledyne Technologies is trading up about 3.7% on the day Monday. This buy marks the first one filed by Mehrabian in the past year. And also on Friday, President Christopher D. Clark purchased $86,240 worth of Royce Micro-cap Trust, purchasing 8,000 shares at a cost of $10.78 each. Before this latest buy, Clark made one other buy in the past year, purchasing $84,000 shares at a cost of $8.40 each. Royce Micro-cap Trust is trading up about 1.4% on the day Monday. Thus far Clark is down about 0.6% on the buy, with shares trading as low as $10.71 in trading on Monday.
Insider Trading: February 1, 2021 (BIV.com)
Insider Andrew Morden, director. Company: Medallion Resources Ltd. (TSX-V:MDL). Shares owned: 0. Trade date: Jan 22. Trade total: $1,220,625. Trade: Sale of 38,750 shares at a price of $31.50 per share. Insider Andrew William Bowering, officer. Company: Prime Mining Corp. (TSX-V:PRYM). Shares owned: 400,000. Trade date: Jan 21, 22. Trade total: $325,000. Trade: Sale of 150,000 shares at prices from $2.10 to $2.15 per share.
-Notable Insider Buys Seen In The Past Week: Green Brick, Intel, Teledyne And More (Benzinga)
Franchise Group Inc (FRG), the parent of Liberty Tax, Vitamin Shoppe and other chains, had a 10% owner increase its stake last week. The 757,000 shares acquired, at a share price of $34.95, totaled more than $26.45 million. That raised that owner’s stake to more than 6.39 million shares, compared to a total float of more than 26 million. The stock closed most recently at $36.28 per share, which is almost 4% higher than the purchase price. Homebuilder Green Brick Partners Inc (GRBK) saw director and hedge fund manager David Einhorn add 850,000 shares in its secondary offering. At a share price of $20.55, that transaction totaled more than $17.46 million. But note that Einhorn sold 6.85 million shares as well, which netted him over $140.76 million. The stock slipped more than 12% last week and closed on Friday at $19.90 per share.
Smiledirectclub Inc (SDC) COO Steven B. Katzman Sold $6.4 million of Shares (Guru Focus)
COO of Smiledirectclub Inc, Steven B. Katzman, sold 412,000 shares of SDC on 01/28/2021 at an average price of $15.65 a share. The total sale was $6.4 million. SmileDirectClub Inc has a market cap of $5.13 billion; its shares were traded at around $13.280000 with and P/S ratio of 7.51.
The Chairman of RosCan Gold (Other OTC: RCGCF) is Buying Shares (Analyst Ratings)
Today, the Chairman of RosCan Gold (RCGCF), Samuel Esson Jonah, bought shares of RCGCF for $999K. This is Jonah’s first transaction since reporting a Sell transaction on GB:STA back in January 2012 In addition to Samuel Esson Jonah, 2 other RCGCF executives reported Buy trades in the last month.
