Hedge Fund Snaps Up LPL Financial Shares (InvestmentNews.com)
It looks as if private equity investors aren’t the only ones interested in buying into the financial advice industry. On Monday, hedge fund Lone Pine Capital said in a filing that it had recently acquired almost 2.3 million shares of LPL Financial Holdings Inc., the parent company of the eponymous broker-dealer, or almost 2.9% of LPL’s shares (LPLA) outstanding. Private equity investors have flooded into the wealth management and registered investment adviser industry in the past six years, driving up the valuations of large RIAs. But it’s not unprecedented for a hedge fund to buy shares and take a position in an publicly traded firm like LPL Financial Holdings. In 2015, activist hedge fund investor Marcato Capital Management took a 6.3% stake in LPL Financial Holdings, claiming at the time that LPL’s share price was undervalued.
Bill Ackman Among Investors as Venture Capital Crypto Firm Shima Capital Raises $200M Fund (Coin Desk)
Shima Capital has raised $200 million for its first venture capital fund to support early-stage Web3 startups. The fund debuted on the same day as a $300 million purse from CoinFund, dual signs that investors remain confident during the crypto bear market. “There’s been crypto funds that have grown and ballooned in size to billions of dollars of assets under management,” founder and managing partner Yida Gao told CoinDesk in an interview. “It’s hard for them to invest in the earliest stages of Web3 founders … We think that’s an area that we can add the most value.”
Month in Review – July 2022 (Hedge Nordic)
Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – After suffering their worst half-year performance since the second half of 2008, Nordic hedge funds advanced 2.0 percent on average in July (97 percent reported) to trim their to-date decline to 5.2 percent. Trend-following CTAs, the top-performing strategy group in the first half of 2022, gave up some of their gains in July.
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Venn by Two Sigma Partners with Coinbase (Hedge Week)
Venn, Two Sigma’s portfolio analytics platform, is partnering with Coinbase Institutional to help educate institutional investors on the digital asset space. The initiative aims to empower institutional investors with the insights needed to incorporate risk analysis of digital assets into their capital allocation frameworks. This collaboration comes amid both volatility and a record amount of institutional capital invested in the asset class, highlighting the need for multi-asset portfolio and risk analytics. Institutional inflows into cryptocurrencies have risen from $6.8 billion in 2020 to $9.3 billion in 2022, marking a 36% jump in the 2-year period, per data from CoinShares. Additionally, 37 crypto-linked investment products were launched in 2021, up from 24 in 2020 – driving the total number of institutional crypto products to 132 globally.
Elliott Looms Over $16 Billion Philip Morris Deal (The Wall Street Journal)
Hedge funds have a message for one of the biggest names in Big Tobacco: Cough up. Philip Morris International Inc (PM) might have to raise its $16 billion friendly bid for Swedish Match AB (SWMA) to gain full ownership of the smokeless-tobacco maker, in what could prove to be the latest instance of a hedge-fund trade often linked to Elliott Management Corp.
Unilever Exec: Investor Peltz Supportive of Sustainability Drive (Reuters)
LONDON, Aug 17 (Reuters) – Activist investor Nelson Peltz is “supportive” of a plan by consumer goods maker Unilever (ULVR.L) to de-carbonize all five of its newly established business units, in an endorsement of its sustainability strategy, a Unilever executive told Reuters. The maker of Knorr stock cubes and Magnum ice creams earlier this year fielded criticism from some shareholders about the importance it places on having social purpose behind brands. It has set a target of net zero emissions by 2039.
Coatue Just Made a Big Bet on SoFi (SOFI) Stock (InvestorPlace)
SoFi (NASDAQ:SOFI) is in the spotlight after Philippe Laffont’s Coatue Management disclosed a new stake in the company through a Q2 13F filing. Founded in 1999 by Laffont, the hedge fund manages more than $8.2 billion in 13F securities today. Furthermore, Laffont is known for his bets on high-growth technology companies and is a member of the Tiger Cubs, or students of Julian Robertson. Coatue operates as a medium- to long-term investor and holds stocks in its portfolio for an average of 6.53 quarters.
Elliot Exited Twitter Prior to Musk’s Decision to Back Out of Deal (Hedge Week)
Elliot Management, an activist hedge fund that pushed for change at Twitter two years ago, exited its holding completely during Q2 of this year, after Elon Musk agreed a $44 billion takeover deal for the social media giant in April, according to a report by The Financial Times. Twitter’s shares jumped dramatically following news of the deal, trading as high as $51.70 at one point in late April, but fell sharply to $37.39 on 30 June when Musk attempted to withdraw from the acquisition. Twitter stock closed at $44.50 on Monday of this week.
Bridgewater Cuts Short Positions in European Companies (Reuters)
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Bridgewater Associates has cut most of its disclosed mammoth bets against European stocks, according to data group Breakout Point, using the hedge fund’s public disclosures. In July, Bridgewater’s big shorts against stocks in more than 50 European companies reached roughly 10 billion euros, in a sign that the hedge fund firm could potentially be pessimistic about companies on the continent.
RenTech’s Tax Plans Again Prove Too Clever (Deal Breaker)
Imagine your employer offered you access to a magical black box that promised to nearly triple your money every two years or so. Now imagine it figured out a way to make at least some of the money pouring out of that black box tax free. Well, Renaissance Technologies built that black box, and for the last two decades has limited access to it exclusively to people who work at Renaissance Technologies: It’s called the Medallion Fund. And then it did indeed figure out a way to make at least some of the money Medallion mints tax free, by getting the Labor Department to sign off on Medallion as a place those employees could invest their Roth IRA contributions.
Thompson Street Raises $1.5bn for Fund VI, Its Biggest Fund Yet (Opalesque.com)
Thompson Street Capital Partners announced the closing of its sixth committed capital investment fund, Thompson Street Capital Partners VI (TSCP VI). The Fund was oversubscribed with total commitments exceeding the $1.5 billion target. According to a press release from the private equity firm focused on investing in founder-led middle market businesses, commitments to TSCP VI came from a well-respected and diverse group of new and existing global limited partners, including leading public, corporate, and foreign pension funds, endowments, insurance companies, foundations, and family offices. As with its prior funds, TSCP’s partners made substantial capital commitments to TSCP VI, it said.
Wednesday 8/17 Insider Buying Report: KELYA, LLY (Nasdaq.com)
On Monday, Kelly Services’ Director, Donald R. Parfet, made a $201,720 buy of KELYA, purchasing 11,000 shares at a cost of $18.34 each. Investors can buy KELYA even cheaper than Parfet did, with the stock changing hands as low as $17.64 in trading on Wednesday which is 3.8% under Parfet’s purchase price. Kelly Services is trading down about 1.3% on the day Wednesday. Before this latest buy, Parfet made one other purchase in the past twelve months, buying $247,969 shares for a cost of $17.71 each. And at Eli Lilly, there was insider buying on Friday, by Director Jackson P. Tai who purchased 656 shares at a cost of $304.19 each, for a total investment of $199,549. Eli Lilly is trading up about 3.1% on the day Wednesday. Tai was up about 5.4% on the buy at the high point of today’s trading session, with LLY trading as high as $320.60 in trading on Wednesday.
Evertec 10% Owner Sold $219.88M In Company Stock (Benzinga)
POPULAR, INC. (BPOP, BPOPO, BPOPM), 10% Owner at Evertec (EVTC), reported a large insider sell on August 15, according to a new SEC filing. What Happened: A Form 4 filing from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday showed that BPOPM) sold 7,065,634 shares of Evertec. The total transaction amounted to $219,882,530.
Study: Insider Trading Occurs in 10% to 25% of Cryptocurrency Listings (Coin Telegraph)
According to a recent study conducted by the University of Technology Sydney, researchers estimated that insider trading occurs in 10% to 25% of cryptocurrency listings. In deriving the conclusion, researchers first sampled 146 token listing announcements on cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase between September 25, 2018, and May 1, 2022. Afterward, researchers examined the price movements of the sampled tokens in the time interval of 300 hours before Coinbase listing announcements up until 100 hours after the announcement, on various exchanges.
Insider Buying Sends Cassava Sciences Stock 25% Higher; Should You Follow? (TipRanks)
Shares of Cassava Sciences (NASDAQ: SAVA) are up 25% today after two corporate insiders disclosed purchasing SAVA stock. Investors may be wondering whether to follow the insiders into the trade. Analysts seem to believe so, as they expect high upside potential. As per regulatory filings filed yesterday, on August 12, Director Sanford Robertson bought 100,000 shares of Cassava for $20.69 per piece, totaling $2.07 million.
