Ray Dalio, Manager of the World’s Biggest Hedge Fund, Lowers His Odds of a Recession (CNBC)
After seeing a “significant risk” of a recession only a month ago, the manager of the world’s largest hedge fund has lowered his odds of an economic downturn, now that the Federal Reserve has pivoted to a more accommodating posture. “While I still expect that there will be a significant slowing of growth in the US and most other countries, I have lowered my odds of a US recession coming prior to the US presidential election to about 35 percent,” Bridgewater Associate‘s Ray Dalio said Thursday in a blog post on LinkedIn. “Because the markets weakened and Fed officials now see that the economy and inflation are weak there has been a shift to an easier stance by the Fed.
Einhorn Says Greenlight Is Taking Bigger Bets on Fewer Names (Bloomberg)
(Bloomberg) — David Einhorn said his Greenlight Capital has become more concentrated on high-conviction wagers after the hedge fund posted its worst performance on record last year. “Through the course of 2018, we reduced our gross exposure in response to a challenging environment for our value-investment style,” Einhorn said Thursday on a conference call discussing results for Greenlight Capital Re Ltd., the Cayman Islands-based reinsurer where he is chairman. “We entered 2019 with a portfolio consisting of fewer names than it did a year ago, but one that is more concentrated in our highest-conviction investments.”
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Activist Investor Starboard Value Says it will Oppose Bristol-Myers’ $74 billion Deal for Celgene (CNBC)
Activist investor Starboard Value said Thursday it intends to use its stake in Bristol-Myers Squibb to oppose the drugmaker’s $74 billion acquisition of Celgene. “Bristol-Myers is deeply undervalued and the recent announcement of the Company’s proposed acquisition of Celgene Corporation is poorly conceived and ill-advised,” Starboard CEO Jeffrey Smith wrote in a letter to Bristol-Myers shareholders. The activist fund has also nominated a slate of director candidates that it hopes to elect at Bristol’s 2019 annual shareholder meeting.
Hedge Funds 2019 Outlook Report (HedgeWeek)
With some much welcomed market volatility in Q4 2018, 2019 could well shape up to be a year for the active trader and give hedge funds a chance to reinforce their value proposition to investors. As Paul Tudor Jones, founder and CIO of Tudor Investment Corp, told Bloomberg recently, 2019 might be a better time to be a trader than to just hold. “I don’t know if we’re going to have a huge amount of trends. It could just be an enormously volatile period with a lot of back and forth,” he said. To get a steer on how managers are thinking about the markets – where are the risks and the opportunities – and how the macro backdrop is shaping the way they generate trading ideas, we thought it beneficial at Hedgeweek to put together a Hedge Funds 2019 Outlook Report. In which, readers will find a plethora of views and opinions from some of the leading managers in the industry.
Swedish Quant Specialist Unveils First Product (HedgeNordic)
Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – Malmö-based quantitative asset management firm OQAM, formerly known as iaib, has successfully launched a multi-strategy systematic hedge fund named ia. The three-month-old fund has now joined the Nordic Hedge Index (NHX). ia employs a variety of proprietary quantitative models to achieve a four-fold objective. First, earn high long-term risk-adjusted returns. Second, produce positive absolute returns in a wide variety of market environments. Third, exhibit low correlation with global financial markets, and fourth, minimize drawdowns or downturns. The fund pursues both directional and relative-value systematic investment strategies.
U.S. Hedge Fund Magnetar Takes Lyon to Court (PV Magazine)
U.S.-based hedge fund Magnetar Capital, a 25% investor in a Lyon subsidiary, is seeking to wind up the group’s solar and storage unit before the Supreme Court of New South Wales. While it believes this to be Magnetar’s attempt to capture a greater share of the value in its dispatchable solar projects, Lyon is looking for ways to buy out Magnetar’s share.
