Activist Investor Snow Park Calls on Front Yard to Liquidate: Letter (Reuters)
BOSTON (Reuters) – Activist investor Snow Park Capital Partners is urging Front Yard Residential Corporation’s board to liquidate the real estate company, arguing this is the best plan following a scuttled merger deal that sent its shares tumbling last month. “We urge the Board to divert from its value-destructive path and pivot to returning capital to long-suffering stockholders via an orderly liquidation of Front Yard’s portfolio,” Snow Park Managing Partner Jeffrey Pierce wrote to the board on Thursday.
Dalio’s Bridgewater Warns of Possible ‘Lost Decade’ for Stocks (Bloomberg)
A reversal of the strong growth seen over the years in U.S. corporate profit margins could lead to a “lost decade” for equity investors, Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates warns. The margins, which have provided a big chunk of the excess return of equities over cash, could face a shift that would go beyond the current cyclical downturn in earnings, Bridgewater analysts wrote in a note to clients dated June 16. “Globalization, perhaps the largest driver of developed world profitability over the past few decades, has already peaked,” the analysts said. “Now the U.S.-China conflict and global pandemic are further accelerating moves by multinationals to reshore and duplicate supply chains, with a focus on reliability as opposed to just cost optimization.”
Carl Icahn and Warren Buffett vs Millennial Traders: who’s Winning? (CMC Markets)
Have millennial traders really been making better investment decisions than Carl Icahn and Warren Buffett? Could veteran hedge fund managers Carl Icahn and Warren Buffett really be getting it all wrong? Recently it seems that way. Along with Stanley Druckenmiller, these trading giants have failed to take advantage of the recent market rally. Either they’ve liquidated stock that’s rebounded or they’ve seemingly failed to call the market’s Spring rally. In Buffett and Icahn’s place, millennial traders, new to the markets and stuck at home, have been booking profits.
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Novogratz: Galaxy Digital Will ‘Suck’ if Bitcoin Fails to Become an Institutional Asset (Coin Desk)
Novogratz, a Wall Street veteran, loves a compelling narrative. “Bitcoin specifically is a story about adoption,” he said a few minutes into our call. “And the next big group that’s going to adopt bitcoin as a store of value, as a digital gold, are the financial advisers.” Earlier this week, Galaxy Digital announced it had partnered with the educational arm of CAIS, a financial product platform that specializes in connecting institutional investors – financial advisers, hedge funds, private equity – to alternative investments and products. The tie-up will see Galaxy provide educational content about crypto to wealth managers and financial advisors. Although the course will offer material on the broader digital asset space, as well as on the emerging market infrastructure, it will revolve around bitcoin.
‘Don’t Confuse Day Traders with Serious Investors’: Warren Buffett and Howard Marks will Win Over Time, Princeton Economist Says (Business Insider)
Day traders are mindlessly buying and most are throwing their money away, Wealthfront’s investment chief Burton Malkiel said in a blog post this week. “Legions of new day traders have poured new money into stocks without a care for the risks involved, clearly unaware of Buffett’s maxim that ‘It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.'” Their “frenzied buying” includes driving up the share prices of FANGDD – a Chinese company unrelated to FANG stocks – and bankrupt car-rental company Hertz, the Princeton economist and author of “”A Random Walk Down Wall Street” said. “I don’t confuse day traders with serious investors,” Malkiel added. “Don’t be misled with false claims of easy profits from day trading.”
FTV Capital Raises $1.2bn for Its Largest Fund to Date (Opalesque.com)
FTV Capital has closed its sixth and largest fund to date FTV VI at its hard cap of $1.2 billion with capital commitments from existing and new limited partners. The latest growth equity fund, which had a fundraising target of $1 billion, pursues opportunities in enterprise technology and services, financial services and payment processing companies, each with a target investment of $30 million to $100 million. “We are grateful for the ongoing trust our investors have placed in our team and our differentiated approach, which drives us to find exciting proprietary investment opportunities,” said Brad Bernstein, managing partner at FTV Capital. Investors in the new fund include the $31.5 billion Texas Municipal Retirement System, Austin.
Target Achieved Halfway Through the Year (Hedge Nordic)
Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – When orchestrating the launch of SEB Eureka Fixed Income Relative Value more than two years ago, Bo Michael Andersen set an explicit return target in the range of 4 to 8 percent per year net-of-fees. After two years of rubbing elbows with the lower-end of the target, the relative-value fund managed by a team of three out of SEB’s Copenhagen office is up 7.2 percent year-to-date through mid-June with six months to the end of this year. “We expect to deliver a return in the high-end or exceeding our long-term return target in 2020,” Andersen tells HedgeNordic. “Our absolute return has been very good both in 2020 and the period since the launch of the fund in January 2018,” he continues.
A Quant Hedge Fund is Looking for Freelance Signal Generators (eFinancialCareers.com)
In the same way that you don’t have to sit at a desk in Mayfair or Connecticut to work for a hedge fund these days, you also have no need of actually getting a full time job with a hedge fund to work for one. More and more funds are hiring ‘freelancers.’ Naturally, they are not called freelancers. Marco Dion, head of research at quant fund QRT (AKA Qube Research and Technologies, the quant fund which spun out of Credit Suisse in 2017), says on LinkedIn that he’s looking for “external alpha generators” while QRT’s website describes the same people as “quant signals external contributors.”
Thursday 6/18 Insider Buying Report: CNNE, CCEL (Nasdaq.com)
On Monday, Cannae Holdings’ Executive Vice President, Michael L. Gravelle, made a $250,012 buy of CNNE, purchasing 6,667 shares at a cost of $37.50 each. Cannae Holdings is trading down about 0.8% on the day Thursday. Before this latest buy, Gravelle made one other buy in the past twelve months, purchasing $99,990 shares at a cost of $33.00 each. And at Cryo-cell, there was insider buying on Monday, by Co-Chief Executive Officer David Portnoy who purchased 30,297 shares at a cost of $7.94 each, for a trade totaling $240,464. Cryo-cell is trading up about 2.3% on the day Thursday. Portnoy was up about 6.4% on the purchase at the high point of today’s trading session, with CCEL trading as high as $8.45 in trading on Thursday.
Cloudflare Inc (NET) COO Michelle Zatlyn Sold $4.7 million of Shares (Guru Focus)
COO of Cloudflare Inc, Michelle Zatlyn, sold 145,500 shares of NET on 06/17/2020 at an average price of $32.37 a share. The total sale was $4.7 million. Cloudflare Inc has a market cap of $10.87 billion; its shares were traded at around $35.80 with and P/S ratio of 24.81. GuruFocus has detected 1 severe warning sign with Cloudflare Inc.
The Non-Executive of TFI International (NYSE: TFII) is Buying Shares (Analyst Ratings)
Yesterday, the Non-Executive of TFI International (TFII), Diane Giard, bought shares of TFII for $220.6K. In addition to Diane Giard, 7 other TFII executives reported Buy trades in the last month. This is Giard’s first transaction since reporting a Sell transaction on NTIOF back in December 2017.
10 Things You Must Know About Insider Trading (Kiplinger.com)
If you’re an active investor who occasionally buys or sells stocks based on tips, you need to know what’s allowed — and what can land you in jail. After all, the headlines are rife these days with Washington, D.C. power brokers who have brought the wrath of the Securities and Exchange Commission down on their heads. In the highest-profile case of alleged insider trading these days, the Department of Justice is investigating Sen. Richard Burr for a series of stock sales he made after attending private coronavirus briefings. A week later the stock market tanked.
