For Buffett, Berkshire, Beating BlackRock ESG May be as Hard as Beating S&P 500 (CNBC)
Berkshire Hathaway is one of the best-run public companies of the 20th century, with the financial performance to prove it. But as the 21st century brings a new generation of investors shifting from pure shareholder capitalism to the stakeholder capitalism aligned with environmental, social and governance mandates, is Warren Buffett’s company positioned to be an ESG leader or laggard? The answer isn’t so simple.
Billionaire Hedge Fund Manager Ray Dalio Still Concerned Government Could Outlaw Cryptocurrency (Bitcoin.com)
Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio is still concerned that governments may outlaw cryptocurrency. Dalio now serves as the firm’s chairman and co-chief investment officer. Bridgewater Associates’ clients include endowments, governments, foundations, pensions, and sovereign wealth funds. Dalio voiced his concern in an interview with CNBC last week, stating that there is “a reasonable chance” that cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, could eventually be outlawed by the federal government.
AMC Share Price Outlook: Three Hedge Funds Take On Retail Traders Ahead of Earnings (Investing Cube)
AMC share price looks set for a slightly lower open this Monday, ahead of the release of its earnings report after market hours. AMC Entertainment Holdings, a WallStreetbets darling stock, continues to feature in the battle between retail traders and institutional trading firms. The latest battle now looks set to occur after Financial Times reported that Odey Asset Management, a London hedge fund, had taken a short position on the stock. This brings to at least three, the number of hedge funds known to have taken contrarian positions to Wallstreetbets’ retail traders. Apart from Iceberg Research in July, the third hedge fund to have shorted AMC is James Hanbury, which says that the positioning of retail investors had created significant distortions that provided a compelling short opportunity.
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First on Nordnet’s Danish Market (Hedge Nordic)
Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – Themes-focused Atlas Global Macro, co-founded by Danish entrepreneur, author and investor Lars Tvede, will be the first hedge fund available on Nordnet’s Danish market. Pan-Nordic digital savings and investments platform Nordnet has entered into a new collaboration with Tvede’s hedge fund to make Atlas Global Macro available on the Nordnet investment platform for wealthy private investors from September.
NorthRock Launches Top Emerging Hedge Fund Manager Platform (Opalesque)
NorthRock Funds, an emerging manager fund platform based in London with offices in the U.S., has launched an alternative funds platform. The platform’s open architecture is built on four key pillars: strategic partnership, performance, liquidity, and risk management. It identifies, selects, and partners with high-potential asset managers. Each fund on the platform reflects a carefully selected investment strategy. In a segregated fund supervised by NorthRock, a mandate is given to a partner asset manager to implement their strategy in line with specific investment guidelines and risk management policies. Investors benefit from a high level of flexibility, transparency, and control, enabling them to make their own investment choices, using any combination of funds.
Hedge Funds Fall into the Red as Volatility and Variants Halt Nine-Month Rise (Hedge Week)
Hedge funds’ nine-month consecutive run of positive returns has been halted, with managers ending last month in the red as market volatility and renewed uncertainty over the impact of coronavirus variants. Hedge Fund Research’s main industry-wide benchmark, the HFR Fund Weighted Composite Index – which tracks the monthly returns of some 1400 single manager hedge funds across all strategy types – lost 0.60 per cent in July, its first down month since September 2020. The dent means hedge funds have now returned 9.45 per cent gain since the start of 2021. Before last month, the industry’s January-to-June advance – a rise of some 10 per cent – had been its best first-half performance since 1999, according to HFR data.
Hedge Fund Manager Keith Meister Says It’s ‘Hard to be Bearish’ on Stocks. Here’s How He’s Investing (CNBC)
Keith Meister, a hedge fund manager and protégé of Carl Icahn, told CNBC on Friday he remains optimistic about stocks even as the S&P 500 hovers near record levels.
US Hedge Fund Swoops on SSE: Energy Giant May be Set for £20bn Takeover as Corporate Raider Elliott Management Builds Up Stake (This Is Money)
The world’s most powerful activist investor has secretly built a stake in energy giant SSE in a move that could lead to a £20billion takeover bid for the FTSE100-listed company. City sources said Elliott Management, which has been dubbed a ‘corporate raider’ for buying shares and forcing change at large companies, has recently bought a large shareholding in SSE which supplies around five million Britons with energy to their homes. It’s not clear how large Elliott’s shareholding in SSE is and why it has taken the position in the London-listed group.
Last Week’s Notable Insider Buys: Magnolia Oil & Gas, Vertex Pharmaceuticals (Benzinga)
Colfax: A director added some Colfax Corp (CFX) shares after the industrial company posted better than expected earnings. Some 250,000 shares were purchased last week at prices ranging from $45.67 to $47.01 apiece. That cost that director more than $11.54 million. Note that the director also picked up 200 shares via trust for the benefit of that director’s child. Vertex Pharmaceuticals: Early last week, a co-lead independent director at Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated (VRTX) added to a stake after a better than expected earnings report. At $197.45 to $198.12 apiece, the 15,000 shares purchased cost that director almost $2.97 million, and they increased the director’s stake to more than 41,200 shares.
Monday 8/9 Insider Buying Report: CFX, WWD (Nasdaq.com)
On Wednesday, Colfax’s Director, Mitchell P. Rales, made a $11.56M buy of CFX, purchasing 250,200 shares at a cost of $46.19 a piece. Rales was up about 3.9% on the buy at the high point of today’s trading session, with CFX trading as high as $47.98 at last check today. Colfax is trading off about 0.8% on the day Monday. This purchase marks the first one filed by Rales in the past year. And also on Wednesday, Director David P. Hess bought $500,588 worth of Woodward, buying 4,400 shares at a cost of $113.77 a piece. Woodward is trading down about 2.6% on the day Monday. Investors are able to bag WWD at a price even lower than Hess did, with shares changing hands as low as $110.62 at last check today which is 2.8% under Hess’s purchase price.
The CEO of Global Payments (NYSE: GPN) is Buying Shares (Analyst Ratings)
Today, the CEO of Global Payments (GPN), Jeffrey Steven Sloan, bought shares of GPN for $500.4K. This is Sloan’s first Buy trade following 3 Sell transactions. In addition to Jeffrey Steven Sloan, one other GPN executive reported Buy trades in the last month. Based on Global Payments’ latest earnings report for the quarter ending June 30, the company posted quarterly revenue of $2.14 billion and quarterly net profit of $264 million.
