How Pursuit of Billionaire Hit One Dead End (NYTimes)
When Jonathan Hollander left his high-flying job at SAC Capital Advisors in late 2008, he departed one of Wall Street’s premier hedge funds. …The agents took Mr. Hollander into a nearby cafe and questioned him about his trading in the stock of a supermarket chain. They showed him a sheet of paper with headshots of several of his former colleagues. At the center was a photograph of Steven A. Cohen, the billionaire owner of SAC, according to two lawyers briefed on the meeting who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. The agents compared Mr. Cohen to a Mafia boss who sat atop a criminal enterprise, the lawyers said.
Palisade Capital Management has launched a long/short equity fund managed by hedge fund veteran Paul Flather. The move follows Palisade’s acquisition of Hermes Advisors, the hedge fund management company Flather founded in 1994. The Palisade Long/Short Alpha Fund will employ the same fundamental, bottom-up stock-picking strategy Flather used for 18 years at Hermes. Flather will work closely with Palisade’s US small and mid-cap equity teams, which manage around $2.3 billion in long-only strategies.
Could Twitter Predict The Quality Of Stock Purchases? (FastCompany)
A new trading product launched by Paul Hawtin of DCM Dealer will make it easier for investors and traders to monitor real-time sentiment about companies on social media networks like Twitter and Facebook. Hatwin launched a hedge fund based on similar data in July of 2011, but shut it down after only a month. He told the Wall Street Journal this week that it failed because his investor base was too risk averse when it came to social media. His latest product targets the average investor, whom he believes will be more likely to embrace social predictors. He might be on to something — researchers at HP Labs found that Twitter was more likely to predict box office sales than the prediction markets, as well as presidential elections.
CalSTRS adds 3rd global macro hedge fund manager (PIOnline)
California State Teachers’ Retirement System, West Sacramento, invested $50 million in hedge fund manager MKP Capital Management’s global macro strategy in the quarter ended Dec. 31. MKP Capital is the third hedge fund manager hired to manage one-quarter of the $154.3 billion system’s $200 million global macro hedge fund portfolio, said Ricardo Duran, a spokesman for the fund, in an interview. Earlier global macro investments were $50 million each to Bridgewater Associates and Alphadyne Asset Management made in December 2011 and June 2012, respectively.
Hedge funds’ Manhattan migration (eFinancialNews)
When Chris Hentemann left Bank of America Corp (NYSE:BAC) in the summer of 2008 with an eye toward starting his own fund, he hung his shingle in Stamford, Conn. By the time the fund launched that fall, he had moved his firm to Midtown Manhattan. The relocation quadrupled Hentemann’s morning commute from Connecticut, but made it easier on visiting pension-fund managers and other investors who flock to New York to shop for hedge funds. “There were enough roadblocks to establishing a new fund that I didn’t want to create another” by being outside Manhattan, Hentemann says. “I can capture that investor that may not have made that trip up to Greenwich, but they had an opening in their schedule an hour before they had to go to JFK to go back to Europe.”
Herbalife Rises to Highest Since Ackman Revealed Short Position (SFGate)
Herbalife Ltd. (NYSE:HLF) rose to the highest price yesterday since before hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman called the nutrition company a pyramid scheme and announced he had taken a short position in the shares. The stock advanced 10 percent to $44.08 yesterday at the close in New York. The stock closed at $42.50 on Dec. 18, the day before Ackman revealed that he had shorted the shares after researching the company for a year.
