Wagamama’s Food Fight With Hedge Fund Is Delicious (Bloomberg)
If you’re a British company selling Asian noodles and investors from Hong Kong tell you you’re doing it wrong, maybe it’s worth lending them an ear — particularly if your shares have lost almost three-quarters of their value since you got into the business. Wagamama owner Restaurant Group Plc hasn’t exactly welcomed Oasis Management Co. with open arms, rebuffing the hedge fund’s request for a board seat and rejecting its demand for an independent strategic review. Their testy exchange suggests this is a food fight worth watching.
Activist Hedge Fund Coliseum Capital Bets Against Lazydays Bears With a Cool $16 Million Share Top Up (247WallSt.com)
Activist hedge fund Coliseum Capital boosted its stake in American RV maker Lazydays Holdings (US:LAZY) this week, according to a Form 4 filed after Thursday’s market close. The fund topped up its position in LAZY after shares slumped around 8% as bearish investors showed their disappointment with weak fourth quarter results last week. The filing was initially spotted on Fintel’s insider trading tracker on Thursday evening.
Bridgewater Overhaul Explains New Hedge Fund Reality (The Washington Post)
In October I wrote that the retirement of Ray Dalio, who founded Bridgewater Associates and ran it for almost half a century, signaled the end of an important era in the hedge fund industry. Dalio was the last of the great investors who started their funds in the 1970s, of whom many hedge fund stereotypes are still based. Now Bridgewater’s new managers are reshaping the firm to make it more similar to the new generation of hedge funds.
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Hedge Funds Hemorrhaged Cash Last Year (The Wall Street Journal)
Last year was rough for investors. It was no different for hedge funds. Globally, the hedge fund industry suffered nearly $46 billion of net redemptions in December, according to Backstop-BarclayHedge. That built on 10 consecutive months of net outflows for a loss of $323 billion in 2022. Hedge funds didn’t just lose cash from clients: the industry also bled $70 billion from trading in December, bringing 2022’s net trading losses to $468 billion. Hedge fund industry assets fell 6.7% to $4.84 trillion as of the end of last year, Backstop-BarclayHedge data show. Fixed-income funds took a particularly bruising beating. Fed up with the one of the worst bond markets on record, clients redeemed $129 billion, or nearly 13% of assets, from such funds.
Performance for Top Hedge Funds Including Citadel, Millennium, Point72 Just Dropped. An Unlikely Winner is at the Top of the Pile. (Business Insider)
February performance figures show a mixed-bag at the top multi-strategy hedge funds. Citadel, continuing its winning streak, is up 2.8% so far, while Millennium is up just 0.5%. ExodusPoint, up 2.9%, is an unlikely winner, rebounding from a challenging 2022. Some of the largest multi-strategy hedge funds had killer years in 2022 while much of the industry struggled. So how are they faring two months into 2023? It’s a mixed bag.
