Kyle Bass’s Texas Feud Spotlights Short-Selling Tactics (Bloomberg)
Ernest Poole had been dead for more than 60 years when someone opened an account in his name at an online platform called Harvest Exchange. Poole, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, was best known for his sympathetic pieces about the Russian Revolution. The platform was strictly for capitalists. Poole was a pseudonym for Kyle Bass, a Dallas hedge fund manager who had taken out what amounts to a Wall Street bounty on a Texas real estate investment trust called United Development Funding. Best known for shorting subprime mortgages ahead of the financial crisis, a Powerball-type win that brought him fame and fortune, Bass had come to believe that UDF was a crooked company hiding losses amid fraudulent transactions with developers. His fund, Hayman Capital Management, had spent months building a short position that would pay off if UDF’s shares tanked.
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Ranks Among the Biggest Republican Donors in the MAGA Index, Even Though the Investor Backed Obama and Clinton (Business Insider)
Warren Buffett has proudly supported Democrats in recent years, yet his Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate is included in an exchange-traded fund that has “MAGA” as its ticker. The Point Bridge GOP Stock Tracker ETF invests in the 150 companies in the S&P 500 with the highest number of workers and political action committees (PACs) that have donated to Republicans in the last two election cycles. Its ticker is a nod to President Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan and rallying cry of “Make America Great Again.”
David Einhorn Unveils Three New Tech Investments, in Spite of Bubble Warnings (Institutional Investor)
His Greenlight Capital established the new positions in the third quarter. David Einhorn’s third-quarter letter drew attention for the famed investors assertion that we are in the middle of “an enormous tech bubble.” But the hedge fund manager’s unveiling of three new long positions was comparatively overlooked. Greenlight Capital, the value-driven long-short hedge fund manager identified and discussed the “medium-sized” new positions…
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How French Trend-Following Hedge Fund Metori Capital Scored Success with Revamped CTA Model (Hedge Week)
In recent years, the relative underperformance of hedge fund strategies compared to the S&P 500’s returns prompted many institutional investors to cast doubt on the value of this industry to their portfolios. But the dramatic swings in markets brought about by the coronavirus pandemic this year have proven a wake-up call for investors, according to Nicolas Gaussel, founding partner and CEO of Metori Capital Management – and firmly demonstrates the worth of a non-correlated trend-following strategy to investors.
Digging for Gold: Paulson & Co.’s Activism in the Gold Sector (Harvard Business School)
The case describes the efforts of hedge fund Paulson & Co. to influence corporate governance and improve performance in the gold industry. In an innovative move, the hedge fund led the creation of the Shareholder Gold Council, a consortium of large investors in gold companies to push gold mining companies to adopt higher levels of corporate governance. The case describes the motivation and process that led to the creation of the SGC and the initial work of the SGC.
Brooklands Fund Management Now Servicing Family Office Sector (WealthAdviser.co)
Brooklands Fund Management, an asset management platform provider specialising in the hedge funds space, is now providing back office support to multi-family offices with a plan to increase the scope of work to more middle office and reporting functions over the course of 2021. Brooklands recently won the mandate of a UK multi-family office and is now keen to progress in this space over the coming years.
Why Private Equity Is Crucial as Businesses Face Structural Transformation (Preqin.com)
Why should private equity players look at Japan? Business-succession-related deals and restructuring investments are well-known themes in the Japanese market. Many business owners recognize that urgent reforms are needed to revitalize the Japanese economy, though many have yet to undertake challenging initiatives or transformations – large-scale monetary policy easing has allowed many businesses to delay such plans.
Norway’s $1.1 Trillion Fund Says Infrastructure Looks Pricey (Bloomberg)
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s biggest, has this year added more than $8 billion to the pot of money that’s overseen by external managers, according to its chief executive officer. Nicolai Tangen, who spoke at a parliamentary hearing in Oslo on Friday, revealed the figure after lawmakers questioned him on his plan to rely more on outside asset managers, including hedge funds, to help oversee the sovereign investor’s vast $1.1 trillion portfolio.
Billionaire Ray Dalio’s 9 Top Stock and ETF Picks (U.S.News)
Ray Dalio‘s Bridgewater Associates is the world’s largest hedge fund with nearly $140 billion in assets. Dalio himself has a net worth of roughly $16.9 billion, according to Forbes. Bridgewater’s popular Pure Alpha II fund has struggled during the wild market swings in 2020, generating an 18.6% decline through the end of August. However, Dalio and the Pure Alpha II fund have a track record of thriving during market recovery periods, including 45% and 25% gains in 2010 and 2011, respectively. Here are Bridgewater’s nine top stock and fund holdings, according to its latest 13F filings.
ESG Focused Investors to Take an Increasingly Activist Role (Opalesque.com)
For asset managers interested in sustainable investing, taking an activist role is becoming more common according to a new report from Schroders. The Schroders Institutional Investor Study 2020 includes data from 650 institutional investors representing $25.9 trillion in assets. According to the findings, 62% of North American institutions said active company engagement and stewardship was a key approach to integrating sustainability. That number is up from 44% a year ago. North American investors are also looking for “best in class” sustainable investment opportunities. 62% of investors said that best in class companies were important, up from 38% last year. In contrast, those that opted for an exclusionary approach fell by the same margin to 30% from 51%.
Steinhoff Ex-CEO Jooste Fined $9.9 Million for Insider Deals (MSN)
Steinhoff International Holdings NV former Chief Executive Officer Markus Jooste has been fined more than 162 million rand ($9.9 million) by a South African regulator for insider trading ahead of the retailer’s near collapse almost three years ago. Jooste sent a text message to four people warning them to sell their stock in the company in the days before it reported accounting irregularities in December 2017, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority said in a statement Friday. Three of them acted on the advice and have been penalized smaller amounts.
Raytheon Technologies Corp (RTX) President and CEO Gregory Hayes Bought $3 million of Shares (Guru Focus)
President and CEO of Raytheon Technologies Corp., Gregory Hayes, bought 55,000 shares of RTX on 10/28/2020 at an average price of $54.82 a share. The total cost of this purchase was $3 million. United Technologies Corp is a diversified industrial conglomerate. It provides high technology products and services to the building systems and aerospace industries. Raytheon Technologies Corp has a market cap of $80.83 billion; its shares were traded at around $53.22 with and P/S ratio of 0.59.
The CVP, Critical Care of Edwards Lifesciences is Exercising Options (Analyst Ratings)
Yesterday it was reported that the CVP, Critical Care of Edwards Lifesciences (EW), Catherine Szyman, exercised options to sell 20,355 EW shares at $22.28 a share, for a total transaction value of $1.49M. Following Catherine Szyman’s last EW Sell transaction on May 24, 2018, the stock climbed by 27.1%. Based on Edwards Lifesciences’ latest earnings report for the quarter ending September 30, the company posted quarterly revenue of $1.14 billion and quarterly net profit of $325 million.
