Billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller Placed Bet Against Tesla During Q4 (Reuters)
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller bet against electric carmaker Tesla Inc during the fourth quarter, wagering that its share price will fall, according to quarterly filings released on Thursday. Druckenmiller’s family fund, which shares the name of the hedge fund Duquesne Capital that he founded in 1981, bought put options on Tesla shares worth $99.8 million, a Security and Exchange Commission filing revealed.
Paul Singer Declares War On China (DealBreaker)
There are many unkind things one could say about Energias de Portugal. Here’s a few of them. Nevertheless, EDP’s unwieldy governance looks culpable for the company’s undervaluation and vulnerability to cheap bids. The board has 21 members, nine of whom have been there seven years or more. Chief Executive Officer Antonio Mexia has been there nearly 13 years. This doesn’t appear conducive to rapid change. The board now needs to explain why it isn’t already implementing Elliott’s ideas. You might think, given the way that paragraph ends, that this comes from a scathing letter from our old friend Paul Singer.
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Hedge Funds Loved Facebook and Google Last Quarter (GuruFocus)
13F data for the last quarter of 2018 is now starting to trickle out. These documents give us a great insight into the world of hedge funds. Any hedge fund with more than $100 million in assets under management has to file a 13F with the SEC detailing its top U.S. equity positions. However, these reports do not contain detailed analysis on other assets, such as debt, cash and private equity. They provide only a snapshot of the equity portfolio at one point in time and are also backward-looking, so they should not be relied upon for trading decisions. Still, these findings can give us some great insight into what hedge funds are thinking, particularly hedge fund thought as a group as we can see where the industry thinks there is more value to be found in the market on a sector-by-sector basis.
Q4 13F Roundup: How Buffett, Einhorn, Ackman And Others Adjusted Their Portfolios (Benzinga)
The latest round of 13F filings from institutional investors is out, revealing to the world the stocks that some of the richest and most successful investors have been buying and selling. Takeaways From 13F Season: Investors who follow particular fund managers can easily look up what each was buying and selling in the quarter, but other investors may be more interested in overall themes from 13F filings. Overall, it appears fund managers were doing more selling than buying of many popular tickers.
Hedge Fund Redemptions Hit Five-year High of USD42.3bn in December (HedgeWeek)
Hedge fund redemptions reached USD42.3 billion in December, according to the Barclay Fund Flow Indicator, published by BarclayHedge, the largest monthly outflow in at least five years. Data from the nearly 6,000 funds included in the BarclayHedge database showed the December activity of hedge fund investors worldwide (excluding CTAs) producing a fourth straight month of net redemptions, exceeding September’s USD39.1 billion, at the time a five-year high.
Good Hedge Funds Had a Good Year (Bloomberg)
Hedge fund earnings: A public-company chief executive officer has two main ways to make money from her job each year: A company could go with all one or the other, and some companies do: A family-owned company might hire an outside manager, give her no equity, and pay her purely in cash; a startup founder-CEO might take no salary and be motivated solely by her part-ownership of the company. But for most normal public companies, it’s a mix of the two.
NYC Hedge-Fund Managers and Silicon Valley CEOs are Flocking to Miami as ‘Tax Refugees,’ and It’s Sparking Record, Ultra-Luxury Real-Estate Sales in the Area (Business Insider)
Tech CEOs and hedge-fund managers from New York, Silicon Valley, and other high-tax areas are relocating to Miami and other parts of South Florida. A top real estate broker in the area, Dora Puig, says they’re “tax refugees:” People looking to establish residency in Florida, a no-income-tax state, after the tax reform that went into effect in January 2018. These wealthy families and individuals are buying up ultra-luxury real estate ranging from $10 million to $50 million. Puig says she’s seen “record sales” in the Miami area.
Thoughts on Sears Long Decline and Edward Lampert’s Bankruptcy Bid (The Wall Street Journal)
Wow, what a deal (“Lampert’s Sears Bid Gets a Nod,” Business News, Feb. 8). Buy a solid, ongoing business with valuable assets. Load it with debt that pays you back. Invest nothing in the business. Strip out most of the assets that have any value. Declare bankruptcy. Unload pensions to the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp. Buy what’s left for pennies on the dollar. Brilliant! And people wonder why hedge-fund guys are hated. Guess this is what I missed by not going to business school.
David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital Used a Bunch of New Yorker Cartoons to Explain Why the Fund Had a Brutal 2018 (Business Insider)
David Einhorn‘s annual presentation to Greenlight Capital investors called 2018 “the year we weren’t right about anything.” Greenlight, which has fallen to roughly $5 billion in assets as investors left the fund because of poor performance, finished 2018 down 34%, but it is off to a good start in 2019. The presentation, given at the end of January, features cartoon strips and New Yorker comics to describe the firm’s feelings on investments such as Tesla, General Motors, and Brighthouse Financial.
