After market’s rapid climb, Einhorn pares bet on rally (InvestmentNews)
Hedge-fund manager David Einhorn is taking a more conservative approach to his investment portfolio even as wagers that stocks would fall caused his results to trail the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. Long positions, which gain on rising asset prices, exceeded short bets by 35 percentage points as of Sept. 30 at Greenlight Capital Re Ltd., the Cayman Islands-based reinsurer where Mr. Einhorn oversees investments and serves as chairman. That’s down from about 42 percentage points three months earlier, the money manager said today on a conference call. “As the market continued its relentless climb, we’ve become more conservatively positioned,” he said.
Bad news piling up on Dan Loeb (NYPost)
The harder they come, the harder they’ll fall. That Jimmy Cliff riff may become the soundtrack of the Island Records executive-cum-hedge-fund titan Dan Loeb, whose $14 billion Third Point firm has been minting money since the crash of 2008. But the bad news for the bad boy of the hedge-fund world has been piling up this year — and it just got a whole lot worse. First, Loeb got into a public spat with the teachers union, sullying his reputation with public employee pension investors.
Ziff Brothers Investments expected to close U.S. hedge fund (FoxBusiness)
New York-based Ziff Brothers Investments plans to gradually shut down its U.S. hedge fund, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. Some of the fund’s top people are expected to be given proceeds to start their own independent firms, the report said, citing people familiar with the firm. Other money could be shifted to Ziff Brothers Investments’ internal hedge fund based in London, or to external hedge-fund managers. The closure of the U.S. fund is tied to the planned retirement of its head portfolio manager, Ian McKinnon, in 2015, the report said. McKinnon, 46 years old, had held the post since 1999.
Why Aren’t Hedge Funds Advertising? (Newyorker)
Since September, hedge funds have been allowed, for the first time, to openly advertise their services. You might expect Anthony Scaramucci to be the first in line. Unlike many hedge-fund types, Scaramucci, the flamboyant founder and co-managing director of the investment firm SkyBridge Capital, doesn’t shy from the spotlight: he is a frequent guest on CNBC; he runs the SALT Conference, a lavish annual confab that is a fixture of the hedge-fund world; one of his books is colorfully titled “Goodbye Gordon Gekko: How to Find Your Fortune Without Losing Your Soul.”…
Activist fund TCI backs EADS boss as defence cuts loom (Yahoo)
The head of hedge fund TCI said he is backing the boss of aerospace giant EADS in his “aggressive” approach to slash costs and grow profit, and expects management to announce further cuts in its defence unit soon. Chris Cooper-Hohn, whose TCI owns more than 1 percent of EADS’ share capital, said he believes EADS is set to benefit as its management focuses on commercial aircraft production and shields the firm from undue meddling from government shareholders in France and Germany. “We believe the company is in the process of doubling and then tripling its profitability,” Cooper-Hohn told an audience at the Ira Sohn conference in London on Thursday.
The ultimate piggy back ride – buying the best picks of the best hedge funds (BusinessInsider)
Hedge funds were some of the biggest winners during the the carnage of the financial crisis but the performance of the sector in the years since has been pretty lacklustre. With bullish sentiment on both sides of the Atlantic driving equity prices to dizzy heights this year, many of these smart money investors have been stung by their short selling positions. But while few private investors will lose any sleep over the pain felt by hedge funds and their infamous ‘2 and 20’ fees, it’s still possible to borrow their best ideas and beat the market. Recently I wrote about how the analysis carried out by hedge fund managers in pursuit of short selling opportunities can be useful to regular investors. In particular, the level of so-called ‘short interest’ in a stock can be a red flag that may signal fundamental flaws buried deep in a balance sheet.
Obamacare rollout a ‘fiasco’ comment is classic Paul Singer (CNBC)
