How EJF Capital is Positioning for Inflation as Central Bank Moves Recalibrate Market Dynamic (Hedge Week)
EJF Capital, which invests long-only and long/short in both equities and credit across the financial services spectrum, believes it is well-placed to navigate the evolving investment landscape, as inflation looms large over markets and the European Central Bank begins winding down its emergency bond-buying pandemic support programme. Peter Stage, EJF Capital’s co-senior managing director in Europe, said inflation continues to be a “topic du jour” across markets, with much of the investment landscape for the remainder of 2021 set to be dominated by central bank policy decisions.
How Steve Cohen, Dmitry Balyasny, and Mike Rockefeller Think About Talent and Keeping Top Performers: ‘If You have People, You have Problems’ (Business Insider)
Steve Cohen, Dmitry Balyasny, Mike Rockefeller, and Ilana Weinstein dished on hedge-fund talent. The four were on a panel at Anthony Scaramucci‘s SALT conference on Tuesday. They gave their views on recruiting, retaining talent, and launching a firm. For those in the hedge-fund industry, the grass is always greener. Those with massive multi-manager platforms envy the new start-up who doesn’t have to manage the egos of hundreds of Ivy League graduates. New launches wish they had to capital to build their firm even faster than planned. But everyone agrees: Managing people and running a business is hard. “If you have people, you have problems,” said billionaire Point72 founder Steve Cohen during a Tuesday panel at Anthony Scaramucci’s SALT Conference. Insider viewed a video of the panel, which also included Dmitry Balyasny, Woodline cofounder Mike Rockefeller, and well-known recruiter Ilana Weinstein.
Ray Dalio Warns This Is What Governments Will Do to Bitcoin if It Becomes ‘Really Successful’ (The Daily Hodl)
Billionaire hedge fund titan Ray Dalio is warning investors that governments might employ draconian measures against Bitcoin (BTC) if the leading cryptocurrency becomes “really successful.” Dalio is the founder of one of the world’s largest investment management firms, Bridgewater Associates. In an interview with CNBC, he claims that if Bitcoin truly takes off, the government has both the motivation and ability to kill the blockchain-based asset. “The governments don’t want to have it [be] successful.
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BlackRock Fund Manager Says He’s Cut Gold Holdings to ‘Almost Zero.’ Here’s Why. (Market Watch)
Sorry, gold bugs. The world’s biggest money manager appears to have run out of love for the precious metal. “Fourteen months ago, we had a fairly significant position in gold. Today, we’ve reduced it to almost zero,” Russ Koesterich, the manager of BlackRock’s Global Allocation Fund (MALOX), told Bloomberg in an interview. “We primarily think of gold as a hedge against equity risk, and that works when you’ve got an environment with real rates that are flat or declining. If part of our view is that real rates normalize a bit, that particular commodity is unlikely to work as well as it did in the middle of 2020,” said Koesterich.
Specialist Hedge Funds are Getting Rich Off Uranium’s Burning Hot Moment (The Motley Fool)
In normal times, uranium is a pretty boring investment. The province of nerdy commodity traders and utilities, as much as 80% of ore gets sold through long-term contracts to nuclear power plants. There’s almost no uranium futures trading, there are no extreme libertarians calling for abandoning cash and adopting a uranium standard. Suddenly, though, the rods are heating up. A viral twist has sent uranium prices and stocks through the roof this week and a handful of specialist hedge funds making bank from the critical mass.
SkyBridge Hedge Fund Sends Application to SEC for Crypto-Based ETF (Coin Tribune)
The SkyBridge Capital fund has filed an application with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch a crypto-based exchange-traded fund (ETF). The ETF’s hallmark is that it aims at investing in shares of companies operating in the digital currency space, rather than directly purchasing Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), other cryptographic assets or related futures. One more ETF on the SEC’s waiting list: SkyBridge Capital is a global investment company based in New York, USA. It is run by Anthony Scaramucci, Brett S. Messing, Raymond Nolte and Troy Gaveski.
Mets Owner Steve Cohen Challenged Twitter Followers to Identify Anonymous Source (New York Post)
Steve Cohen put his Twitter followers to the test Thursday morning, trying to identify an anonymous source who, in part, criticized the Mets owner’s Twitter usage in a Post story. The hedge fund billionaire, who offered three fans the chance to sit with him in his suite at Citi Field for guessing the source correctly, claimed to know that it was David Samson, the former Marlins president. The Post does not identify its anonymous sources, but beat writer Mike Puma, who wrote the story, tweeted that it was not Samson.
The Future of Bitcoin: From Ray Dalio to Cathie Wood, Top Investment Pandits Weigh In (CNBC TV 18)
Bitcoin prices have experienced some wild swings in August-September. A week ago, its prices had touched $52,000 only to correct back to $45,000 the next day. And while in the past couple of months, it has seen lows of $30,000 after rising as high as $65,000, some crypto analysts and proponents believe it could touch as high as $300,000 by next year. At the same time, there are some well-known people singing bearish tones for the coin. While it’s hard to say what the future has in store for the crypto, we take a look at what bitcoin’s proponents and opponents are saying about the coin. And maybe, take a brief glance at what the future holds.
AQR Hedge Fund Suffers $10bn in Outflows (UK Today News)
The AQR Managed Futures Strategy fund, a computer-driven mutual fund that tries to profit from market trends, has fallen in size from about $12bn in late 2017 to $1.5bn currently, according to fund documents. While the fund’s bets have often lost money in recent years, most of the drop in assets pertains to client withdrawals. The outflows come even as Connecticut-based AQR has enjoyed a stronger period of performance more broadly across many of its portfolios, after shedding $86bn in assets from its peak. AQR, which manages about $140bn in total assets and is headed by former Goldman Sachs managing director Cliff Asness, is well known for its academic approach to investing. It breaks down hedge fund returns into their basic components before building relatively low-cost portfolios to try and exploit those characteristics.
Friday 9/17 Insider Buying Report: AMWD, ET (Nasdaq.com)
On Tuesday, American Woodmark’s Director, Vance W. Tang, made a $396,360 buy of AMWD, purchasing 6,000 shares at a cost of $66.06 a piece. American Woodmark is trading up about 1% on the day Friday. And at Energy Transfer, there was insider buying on Wednesday, by Director Richard D. Brannon who purchased 24,500 shares at a cost of $9.33 each, for a total investment of $228,585. Energy Transfer is trading off about 0.3% on the day Friday.
William Penn Insider Trades $110.11 Thousand In Company Stock (Benzinga)
W. Keith Maxwell Iii, CEO at William Penn, made a large insider buy on September 14, according to a new SEC filing. What Happened: A Form 4 filing from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday showed that Iii purchased 11,000 shares of William Penn at a price of $5.0 per share. The total transaction amounted to $110,110. Following the transaction, Iii now owns 3,508,502 shares of William Penn, worth $35,786,720. William Penn shares are trading up 0.39% at $10.2 at the time of this writing on Friday morning.
A Director at Colfax (NYSE: CFX) is Selling Shares (Analyst Ratings)
Yesterday, a Director at Colfax (CFX), Rajiv Vinnakota, sold shares of CFX for $103.5K. Following Rajiv Vinnakota’s last CFX Sell transaction on June 16, 2020, the stock climbed by 17.2%. Based on Colfax’s latest earnings report for the quarter ending June 30, the company posted quarterly revenue of $986 million and quarterly net profit of $28.64 million. In comparison, last year the company earned revenue of $620 million and had a GAAP net loss of $8.47 million. The company has a one-year high of $50.34 and a one-year low of $26.45. CFX’s market cap is $6.95 billion and the company has a P/E ratio of 72.30.
OpenSea Exec Resigns Over Insider Trading Allegations (Benzinga)
OpenSea — the world’s top non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace – announced the executive involved in the recent insider trading scandal has resigned from their position. What Happened: According to an OpenSea announcement, the firm “requested and accepted” the resignation of the employee responsible for the insider trader activity that made waves in the NFT community. The employee purportedly “purchased items that they knew were set to display on our front page before they appeared there publicly,” the company said.
