Reuters Insider: Jim Rogers says Bernanke ‘doesn’t understand much of anything, except printing money’ (Reuters Hedgeworld)
Veteran investor Jim Rogers tells Reuters Insider’s Chloe Hayward he is confident the euro zone will recover from its debt crisis and is staying long the euro. He also thinks another round of quantitative easing will be implemented by the U.S. Federal Reserve.“Obviously the euro … is under pressure right now and the European Union is being tested,” Rogers says. “I suspect they’re going to pass the test and I suspect the euro’s going to survive, at least this time around. My portfolio basically has got long currencies and commodities, and I’m short emerging markets and I’m short technology stocks. I’m short a big American bank, I’m short American government bonds. That’s essentially where I’m investing these days.”
Hedge Farm! The Doomsday Food Price Scenario Turning Hedgies into Survivalists (NY Observer)
Even Michael Burry, the now-defunct Scion Capital founder and star protagonist of Michael Lewis’ The Big Short-who bet against the housing bubble in 2008 with credit default swaps to enormous profit-gave a rare interview on Bloomberg TV last year, explaining that he’s thrown his hat into “productive agriculture land with water on site” as it’s going to be “very valuable in the future.” Three years later, the purchase of farmland both in America and abroad by outside investors has increased-so much so that in February, Thomas Hoenig, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, warned against the violent possibilities of a farmland bubble, telling the Senate Agriculture Committee that “distortions in financial markets” will catch the U.S. by surprise again. He would know, because he’s seeing it in his backyard: Kansas and Nebraska reported farmland prices 20 percent above the previous year’s levels and are on pace to double values in four years.
Alden Global Capital buys Journal Register Co. (WSJ)
Journal Register Co. says it has been acquired by the Alden Global Capital hedge fund less than two years after the newspaper and digital media publisher emerged from bankruptcy protection and implemented an expansive digital presence. Chief Executive John Paton on Thursday called the move a vote of confidence by Alden in the company’s “Digital First Strategy” and indicative of the company’s turnaround. Alden, a distressed debt specialist, has been acquiring stakes in newspapers and was one of JRC’s investors.
Gold funds dominate top performers in Q2 (Reuters)
Gold funds dominated a league table of commodity managers in the second quarter, but amongst the broad-based funds, it was those seeking returns uncorrelated with commodity price direction that did well after markets sold off heavily in May. PIMCO’s CommoditiesPLUS Short Strategy fund topped a Lipper performance league table of more than 100 actively managed commodity funds, up 6.80 percent, whilst the DB Platinum V Hermes Absolute Return Commodity Fund came seventh, up 2.16 percent.
