Why Aren’t There More Female Hedge Fund Managers? (BusinessWeek)
Why aren’t there more women running hedge funds? The money’s good, and the lifestyle would seem to lend itself better to balancing family demands than more traditional Wall Street jobs, with less face time and greater emphasis on money-making rather than bonding on the golf-course… Over at DealBook, Whitney Tilson, one of the more thoughtful members of the hedge fund brotherhood, makes an attempt to answer the question of why his field continues to be so male-dominated. ”If women are, in general, better suited to be successful investors, then this is a strange market inefficiency,” Tilson writes. “It would be like discovering that tall people were vastly underrepresented in the NBA. What could possibly explain this?”
How Meditation Makes Ray Dalio Feel ‘Like A Ninja In A Fight’ (BusinessInsider)
Billionaire Ray Dalio, the founder of hedge fund behemoth Bridgewater Associates, has been practicing Transcendental Meditation (TM) for 42 years. “Meditation, more than any other factor, has been the reason for what success I’ve had.” Dalio spoke at a Transcendental Meditation Town Hall last night at the AXA Equitable Building in Midtown Manhattan along with other leaders and celebrities. Money from the event will go toward teaching at-risk youth and veterans meditation.
FCA Insider Trading Probe Sees Julian Rifat Bailed Until May (IBTimes)
Julian Rifat, a former hedge fund trader who appeared at Southwark Crown Court answering eight counts of insider trading, will return to court in May. Rifat, formerly an execution trader at Moore Capital Management, remains on unconditional bail until the next hearing, when he is expected to enter a plea. He was originally arrested back in 2010 as part of the Financial Conduct Authority’s Operation Tabernula, which is thought to be the UK’s largest investigation into inside trading.
Blackstone Raises $1.4 Billion for Stakes in Hedge-Fund Managers (BusinessWeek)
The Blackstone Group L.P. (NYSE:BX), the world’s biggest manager of alternative assets such as real estate and private-equity funds, raised an initial $1.4 billion to buy stakes in hedge-fund firms, Vice Chairman Tom Hill said. Blackstone is seeking $3 billion for the strategy, which will target firms with $3 billion to $4 billion in assets, Hill said today at Credit Suisse Group AG (NYSE:CS)’s financial-services forum in Boca Raton, Florida. New York-based Blackstone is seeing opportunities to buy stakes at valuations of 4.5 to 5 times cash flow, he said.
Hedge funds enjoy January performance boost -SS&C (Reuters)
Hedge fund returns grew 1.39 percent in January, recovering from December’s four-month low and outperforming many leading developed market stock indexes, the SS&C Hedge Fund Performance Index showed. Funds also saw money trickle back in February, with SS&C’s separate GlobeOp Capital Movement Index, which calculates monthly hedge fund subscriptions less redemptions, rising 0.94 percent, the financial software firm said in a statement. “Net flows were positive for the month, with subscriptions outpacing redemptions by two to one,” said Bill Stone, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, SS&C Technologies.
Asian Hedge Fund Capital Hits Record US$112B (Finalternatives)
Total capital in Asian hedge funds has hit a record US$112.3 billion, according to the latest HFR data. Inflows and performance in late 2013/early 2014 drove total investor capital to surpass the record level set in 2007. Investors allocated US$4.2 billion of new capital to the region’s hedge funds in Q4 2013, the highest quarterly inflows since HFR began tracking in Q108. Full-year 2013 inflows totaled US$10.5 billion, also a calendar year record.
Hedge fund names Cliffs CEO candidate, to nominate new directors (Reuters)
An activist investor squaring off with Cliffs Natural Resources Inc (NYSE:CLF) named its preferred candidate to become chief executive of the hard-hit miner on Wednesday and said it planned to nominate a majority slate of directors for election to the board. Hedge fund Casablanca Capital, which owns about 5.2 percent of Cliffs, said it is backing Lourenco Goncalves, former chief executive of Metals USA, to take the top job at Cliffs.
