The Fed’s Hawkishness Dents Pershing Square’s Turnaround (Institutional Investor)
Until recently, Bill Ackman had been browbeating the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates aggressively. But the Fed’s recent signals that it plans to keep doing so isn’t helping the stock market as the hedge fund manager hoped. Nor is it helping Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital hedge funds. The Fed’s hawkishness turned a mid-summer market rally into another leg down in late August, stopping this year’s turnaround of Pershing Square Holdings in its tracks. The publicly-traded hedge fund ended August only up 2.9 percent, compared with a gain of 9.4 percent as of August 16. That leaves its year-to-date decline at 16.1 percent. The S&P 500 is now down about 17 percent for the year.
Peltz’s Trian UK Investment Fund to Close After Campaign by Activist Investors (Reuters)
LONDON, Sept 2 (Reuters) – UK investment trust Trian Investors 1 (TI1.L), whose investment strategy is overseen by activist investor Nelson Peltz, will wind up the company, it said on Friday, after a campaign for change at the firm by a group of activist investors. Shareholders led by Global Value Fund, Invesco (IVZ.N), Janus Henderson (JHG.N) and Pelham voted to remove TI1’s chair last month.
How Midnight Forex Trading in Singapore Led to a London Hedge Fund Founder’s Arrest (Financial News)
Hedge fund Glen Point Capital was thrown into the headlines this week when its co-founder and co-chief investment officer Neil Phillips was arrested in Spain over a string of charges relating to wire fraud, commodities and foreign exchange manipulation. The 52-year-old London-based hedge fund executive allegedly manipulated the FX market in order to unlawfully obtain millions of dollars in payments for his hedge fund under an options contract, US attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams said on 1 September.
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
A $21 Billion Hedge Fund Predicting a Wave of Bankruptcies Breaks Down Its Playbook for Distressed Investing (Business Insider)
Rising interest rates and weakening demand are making it more expensive for companies to finance their businesses, giving hedge funds like Canyon Partners more opportunities to find distressed deals. Canyon Partners — which focuses on strategies like distressed loans, event-driven equities, and arbitrage — is currently timing when the next wave of bankruptcies and restructurings will occur. That depends largely on how long the Federal Reserve keeps raising interest rates to rein in inflation. Indeed, Fed chair Jerome Powell said last week that the path to quell inflation will result in some pain for US households and will not be quick nor easy, CNBC reported.
A Hot Jobs Report Could Send Bitcoin to $15,000, Hedge Fund Says (Bloomberg)
A stronger-than-expected US jobs report on Friday could send convulsions through cryptocurrencies and push Bitcoin to as low as $15,000, according to a hedge fund that dumped much of its crypto holdings in late August. Elevated employment figures would raise the odds of more jumbo interest rate increases by the Federal Reserve, jeopardizing the $20,000 level at which Bitcoin has been holding firm since a mid-August selloff, said Max Gokhman, chief investment officer of AlphaTrAI.
Glenview Suffers an August Setback (Institutional Investor)
Larry Robbins’ Glenview Capital Management posted losses in its three main funds in August. However, the losses were much smaller than those suffered by the major market indices, which lost between 4 percent and 5 percent for the month. Glenview Capital Partners, the firm’s flagship, lost 2.9 percent in August…
Archer Capital Management Group, the Archer Growth Fund and Related Entities Charged with Defrauding Investors (HedgeCo.net)
(HedgeCo.Net) The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Archer Capital Management Group, the Archer Growth Fund, and two related entities, HDR Management LLC and Silvermoon Group LLC, with operating a fraudulent scheme from December 2019 through December 2020 that raised approximately $2.6 million from at least 20 investors by using misrepresentations disseminated via Archer Capital’s website and other internet outlets. The SEC alleges that the defendants acted through unidentified agents using fraudulent identities to engage in an internet offering fraud.
Friday 9/2 Insider Buying Report: SEAS, WEST (Nasdaq.com)
At SeaWorld Entertainment, a filing with the SEC revealed that on Tuesday, See Remarks Michelle F. Adams bought 39,000 shares of SEAS, for a cost of $51.03 each, for a total investment of $1.99M. SeaWorld Entertainment is trading up about 3.1% on the day Friday. And at Westrock Coffee, there was insider buying on Tuesday, by Director Joe T. Ford who bought 107,000 shares at a cost of $12.15 each, for a trade totaling $1.30M. This buy marks the first one filed by Ford in the past year. Westrock Coffee is trading up about 0.5% on the day Friday. Investors are able to bag WEST even cheaper than Ford did, with the stock trading as low as $10.87 at last check today — that’s 10.5% under Ford’s purchase price.
President and CEO Of Lancaster Colony Makes $2.47M Sale (Benzinga)
David Alan Ciesinski, President and CEO at Lancaster Colony (LANC), reported a large insider sell on August 31, according to a new SEC filing. What Happened: A Form 4 filing from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday showed that Ciesinski sold 14,431 shares of Lancaster Colony. The total transaction amounted to $2,467,955. Lancaster Colony shares are trading down 1.61% at $165.83 at the time of this writing on Thursday morning.
Hedge Fund Trends Show Tilt Back to Growth (Guru Focus)
The weak performance of most hedge funds compared to the S&P 500 has been no secret, and data on the most popular hedge fund positions based on 13F data has shown why. Most hedge funds’ favorite stocks have been underperforming, causing fund managers to generate lower returns versus the general market. As a result, investors who followed the so-called “smart money” may have seen their stocks plummet. Although a two-month relief rally suggested that hedge fund favorites would make a comeback, returning to their typical position of outperformance, the last two weeks of August have brought another reversal.
