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)
Free Trial Intraday Tips (WND)
George Soros-funded economist Jeffrey Sachs this week briefed members of Congress on the so-called Robin Hood tax, which calls for a small fee on Wall Street trades. The Robin Hood tax was proposed by U.S. politicians closely tied to the country’s largest socialist organization, WND has learned. The Congressional Budget Office has warned the Robin Hood tax on certain financial transactions could “diminish the importance of the United States as a major financial market” and that “imposing the transaction tax would probably reduce output and employment.”
Nouriel Roubini : Bubbles In The Broth (JewishBusinessNews)
As below-trend GDP growth and high unemployment continue to afflict most advanced economies, their central banks have resorted to increasingly unconventional monetary policy. An alphabet soup of measures has been served up: ZIRP (zero-interest-rate policy); QE (quantitative easing, or purchases of government bonds to reduce long-term rates when short-term policy rates are zero); CE (credit easing, or purchases of private assets aimed at lowering the private sector’s cost of capital); and FG (forward guidance, or the commitment to maintain QE or ZIRP until, say, the unemployment rate reaches a certain target). Some have gone as far as proposing NIPR (negative-interest-rate policy).
Hedge fund managers discuss their top stock picks (Reuters)
Hedge fund managers presented their stock-picking ideas at a conference this week organized by the Sohn Conference Foundation. The Foundation raises money to support initiatives to cure and treat pediatric cancer. Following are some of the ideas presented: Masroor Siddiqui, co-founder of London-based Naya Capital, focused on one short and one long position in his presentation. For the short position, Naya is betting the price of shares in Essilor, the world’s largest maker of ophthalmic lenses, will fall to 60 euros from around 80 currently. Siddiqui said Essilor’s business model faces rising pressure from digital technology that enables buyers to use a computer to create specific prescriptions.
Why Nordea is One Hedge Fund Manager’s Teddy Bear (WSJ)
It’s not every day you expect a hedge fund manager to talk about his stocks in terms of childhood toys, but Egerton Capital’s John Armitage said today his company’s position on Nordic bank Nordea is a “a teddy bear stock: you can sleep comfortably and undemandingly with it at night. It’s a low risk stock and a lucrative investment.” “Governance is a key reason why we like it,” he said, adding that Nordea is the number one or two bank in every country in Scandinavia in every activity. Mr. Armitage added that SampoSAMAS.HE +0.37%, the Finnish financial company that controls Nordea, is “a real value creator”, adding, “one of the nice things about Sampo is that in their view boring is good.”
SAC’s Cohen to Auction Artworks Valued at $85 Million (Bloomberg)
Billionaire hedge-fund manager Steven A. Cohen is selling artworks from his collection during the big, semi-annual auctions in New York this month. Most of the sales will be at Sothebys (NYSE:BID) contemporary-art evening sale on Nov. 13, according to a person familiar with the matter. Cohen’s works by Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, Brice Marden, Cy Twombly and Joan Mitchell have been estimated at as much as $85 million, or 20 percent of the $424.6 million auction. Christie’s has “minor” works from Cohen’s collection, estimated at less than $5 million, according to Brett Gorvy, chairman and international head of postwar and contemporary art at Christie’s.
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