Analyst’s Dim View of Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) Could Affect Share Price in the Coming Weeks (BenchmarkMonitor)
With rumors that Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) will pre-release Windows 9 this fall, a number of fund managers have begun to bet that shares a poised to fall – closed at $ 41.78 on Tuesday, down 0.50 percent. According to hedge fund consultant Peter Cohen, ‘Microsoft is over-valued given its slow earnings growth, its challenge in competing against Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) in the cloud and Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) and others in office software, and the near-impossible task of earning a return on its Nokia Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:NOK) investment.’
Evanston Launches Multi Strategy Hedge Fund (HedgeCo)
An Illinois-based hedge fund manager with around $4.9 billion AUM, is launching the Evanston Alternative Opportunities Fund. The new fund, launched by Evanston Capital Management started up on July 1, 2014. The Fund is available to U.S. accredited investors, including ERISA accounts, has an initial minimum investment of $50,000 and offers Form 1099 tax reporting. The new fund has strategic exposure to Long/Short Equity, Relative Value, Event Driven, and Global Asset Allocation.
The End of Preet Bharara’s Perfect Record on Insider Trading (BusinessWeek)
In a stunning, if not altogether unpredictable loss for U.S. prosecutors, a jury on Tuesday found Rengan Rajaratnam, the younger brother of convicted insider trader Raj Rajaratnam, not guilty of conspiracy to commit securities fraud. The jury deliberated for only a few hours. Rengan was charged with conspiring with his brother to trade in two tech stocks, Clearwire Corporation (NASDAQ:CLWR) and Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NYSE:AMD), based on illegal information that Raj had obtained. In a small twist of irony, it was a Securities and Exchange Commission examination of Rengan’s $80 million hedge fund, Sedna Capital, back in 2006 that helped trigger the government’s sweeping insider trading investigation involving the FBI in New York, prosecutors in Preet Bharara’s Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office, and the SEC.
Hedge fund pushes to split CEO, chairman roles at Darden (OrlandoSentinel)
A hedge fund that invests in Darden Restaurants, Inc. (NYSE:DRI) hopes to persuade shareholders to call for splitting the roles of chief executive officer and chairman. Barington Capital Group, which controls a little more than 2 percent of Darden stock, has submitted the proposal for an investor vote at the company’s shareholder meeting Sept. 30. The vote would be nonbinding, meaning it would be up to the company to decide whether to follow the will of stockholders.
Marc Faber and Peter Schiff may be just what this rally needs (CNBC)
On CNBC’s “Futures Now,” “Dr. Doom” Marc Faber presented a dire assessment of a broad range of investments, from the American stock market to bonds and real estate, proclaiming that “it’s a colossal bubble in all asset prices, and eventually it will burst, and maybe it has begun to burst already.” The publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom report, who is now calling for a 30 percent crash in the S&P 500, put it even more succinctly at the very end of the interview Tuesday: “We’re all doomed! We’re all doomed!” That view was echoed by Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, though the gold bug is more concerned about a decline in the value of the U.S. dollar, which would help boost gold prices.
Boone Pickens: ‘I’m a patriotic American’ (NewsOK)
Six years after veteran energy executive Boone Pickens introduced the “Pickens Plan,” America still does not have a comprehensive national energy plan. Why, asks CBS News? Pickens has a one-word explanation: Washington. “You’ve got to change some things in Washington because what we’re doing is wasting a hell of a lot time,” Pickens told said in an interview that covered energy policy, OPEC and politics.
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