London Hedge Fund’s 17 Partners Share £258m Windfall (The Guardian)
One of London’s most successful hedge funds has declared profits of £258m, delivering a multimillion-pound windfall to its 17 partners. Marshall Wace’s limited liability partnership reported turnover of £803m in the year ending in February 2019, a 24% increase compared with the £647m it made in 2018, according to the latest accounts. Marshall Wace was founded in 1997 by Paul Marshall and Ian Wace. Marshall and Wace are both worth about £590m, according to the Sunday Times.
Citadel’s Commodities Hedge Fund Business Up $1 billion – Sources (Invezz.com)
Citadel’s commodities business value is up at least $1 billion this year, this is according to three sources who spoke to Reuters. The gain is expected to boost the hedge fund’s performance even as it looks to maintain its already-great industry reputation. According to its website, Citadel works relentlessly to discover and capture new opportunities. As we speak, the company is said to be managing about $30 billion worth of portfolio for its retail and institutional investors. Two sources said that its main profits are credited to the strong performance in European natural gas and power trading.
The Death of Hedge Funds-When We Need Them Most? (MoneyShow.com)
With the latest news of Louis Bacon’s closing down his hedge funds, we are seeing further evidence of the difficulties hedge funds have been having during recent years. But, if you think about the counter-intuitive nature of this trend, it is actually quite interesting. Let me take a step back and walk you through what I am thinking. For those that follow the market, you know that as prices go up, more and more people want to buy into the market. In other words, higher prices beget higher prices, and this is how the herding principle drives stock markets to their all-time highs.
Maxx-Studio/Shutterstock.com
Hedge Funds Might Blow a $4.4 Billion Light Bulb Deal (Bloomberg)
Hedge funds have got AMS AG over a barrel. The Austrian sensor maker this week made a desperate-sounding appeal to shareholders in Osram Licht AG to accept its 4 billion-euro ($4.4 billion) offer for the German lighting group, amid signs that merger arbitrage investors with a big block of Osram shares might not be ready to sell all of their stock. There are no easy options for AMS, and the market knows it. The stand-off began in September when AMS first made the offer and subsequently mopped up a 20% Osram stake to see off a possible counterbid from private equity. But AMS has just replaced one enemy with another. Existing Osram shareholders sold and hedge funds probably control a sizeable stake now.
Hedge Fund Managers Up 0.40 per cent in October Following a Flat Q3, Says Eurekahedge (Hedge Week)
Hedge fund managers kicked off the fourth quarter on a positive note following a flat Q3, with the equal-weighted index up 0.40 per cent and the asset-weighted index up 0.82 per cent in October, according to data released by Eurekahedge. The resumption of the US-China trade talks provided support for global equity and bond markets throughout the month. Returns were positive across major regions and strategies over the first ten months of the year. Hedge fund launch activities continued to lag behind fund closures, as the global hedge fund industry is on track to record a fourth consecutive year of net population decline. 502 launches and 548 closures have been recorded as of October 2019 year-to-date.
50 South Capital & Preqin Highlight Emerging Manager Outperformance in a New Report (Opalesque.com)
Bailey McCann, Opalesque New York for New Managers: New data from Preqin and 50 South Capital, the investment arm of Northern Trust, shows that emerging managers are outperforming established managers by almost 4% annually. The outperformance holds across strategies, indicating that investors are getting a premium for getting in early. Opalesque New Managers spoke with Director of Research for 50 South Capital’s Hedge Fund Investment Team about the results of the study and about how allocators are taking a second look at early-stage funds. “As a team, we only invest in emerging managers and we think there are a lot of reasons why you should. The study shows definitively that new managers consistently outperform more established funds,” Frede said.
Indian Hedge Funds Return 0.09% in October, Way Behind Asian Peers (Business-Standard.com)
The current economic slowdown may well have weighed on Indian hedge funds too. A hundred dollars invested in them at the beginning of the year would have yielded investors less than ten cents (dollar returns 0.09 per cent) by October-end. Investors in Asian hedge funds would have made a little over 6 dollars (dollar returns of 6.1 per cent), shows data from hedge fund tracker Eurekahedge. The Eurekahedge India Hedge Fund Index is made up of 17 funds with equal weights in the index. The Eurekahedge Asian Hedge Fund Index is similarly made up of 308 funds from across Asia. The Indian index had done marginally better than its Asian peers in 2018. The Asian index was down 13.39 per cent. The Indian index fell 12.83 per cent. India’s returns are also higher since inception in December 2003. It is up 178.4 per cent. It was 162.8 per cent for Asian funds.
Toshiba, Once a Hedge Fund Target, Seeks to Become One (Asia.Nikkei.com)
TOKYO — Toshiba, the Japanese conglomerate that two years ago was pressured by activist investors to restructure its operations in one of the country’s most controversial corporate sagas, may soon join the ranks of hedge funds by becoming one itself. The Japanese industrial major, which is known for its high-technology research, is obtaining a license to operate a hedge fund after it developed an ultrahigh speed machine that employs quantum computing and a proprietary algorithm to seek out arbitrage opportunities in foreign exchange trading.
Millennium Management LLC Acquires 508,805 Shares of FedEx Co. (NYSE:FDX) (TheEnterpriseLeader.com)
Millennium Management LLC raised its holdings in shares of FedEx Co. (NYSE:FDX) by 2,287.7% in the third quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 531,046 shares of the shipping service provider’s stock after purchasing an additional 508,805 shares during the quarter. Millennium Management LLC’s holdings in FedEx were worth $77,304,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.
SEC Revokes Registration of Adviser Engaged in $60 Million Fraud (HedgeCo.net)
(HedgeCo.Net) The Securities and Exchange Commission has revoked the registration of New York-based investment adviser International Investment Group LLC (IIG), which the Commission recently charged with securities fraud for hiding losses in its flagship hedge fund and selling at least $60 million in fake loan assets to clients. The SEC’s complaint, filed on Nov. 21, 2019, in federal court in New York, alleges that IIG grossly overstated the value of defaulted loans in the fund’s portfolio to conceal losses in its flagship hedge fund. In an effort to continue its deception, IIG allegedly doctored the firm’s records to show that the defaulted loans had been repaid and that the proceeds had been used to make new loans, when in fact there had been no repayment and the purported new loans were fake.
A Rare Insider Trading Signal is Happening Right Now (Nasdaq.com)
What do Elon Musk and Mary Dillon have in common? Both are CEOs who have bought shares of their own companies just before the share prices moved higher. You have probably heard of Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla. In 2013, he made a big statement by buying over a million shares of Tesla stock for $100 million even though he already had plenty of shares. Musk went out on the limb even further, as he had to borrow the money from Goldman Sachs to buy the shares. He used his previous holdings in Tesla, and stakes in other companies, as collateral. Since then, shares of Tesla are up over 190%.
Cognex Corp (CGNX) CEO& President Robert Willett Sold $5 million of Shares (Guru Focus)
CEO& President of Cognex Corp., Robert Willett, sold 100,000 shares of CGNX on 11/26/2019 at an average price of $50.49 a share. The total sale was $5 million. Cognex Corp is a provider of machine vision products that capture and analyze visual information in order to automate tasks in manufacturing processes. Its products are used to automate the manufacture and tracking of discrete items.
Cherry Ex-CEO Anders Holmgren Beats Insider Trading Charges (CalvinAyre.com)
Online gambling operator Cherry AB’s former CEO has been acquitted on the insider trading charges that resulted in his dismissal last year. In May 2018, Swedish online gambling operator Cherry AB sacked its then-CEO Anders Holmgren after he was arrested on charges of ‘severe’ illegal insider trading. Holmgren was accused of snapping up 200k Cherry shares worth around $1.4m between the company’s November 2017 profit warning and its April 2018 announcement that its Q1 results were “better than anticipated.”
What Did This CEO Just Do with Personal Shares of Post Holdings (NYSE: POST)? (Analyst Ratings)
Today, the PRESIDENT & CEO of Post Holdings (POST), Robert Vitale, sold shares of POST for $1.62M. Following Robert Vitale’s last POST Sell transaction on February 07, 2018, the stock climbed by 31.4%. This is Vitale’s first Sell trade following 3 Buy transactions.
