Chanos, Zimmerman on Hedge Fund History (Bloomberg)

Jim Chanos, founder of Kynikos Associates Ltd., Jamie Zimmerman, chief executive officer of Litespeed Management LLC, Michael Novogratz, principal at Fortress Investment Group LLC, and Steve Kuhn, head of fixed income trading at Pine River Capital Management LP, discuss the history of the hedge fund industry and government regulation. Betty Liu reports on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop.” The full conversation, “Titans at the Table,” airs tomorrow on Bloomberg Television at 9 p.m. New York time. (more…)

Tiger cub Andreas Halvorsen launched Viking Global at the end of 1999 with fellow former Tiger employees David Ott and Brian Olson. In its first year the fund returned 89% after fees. While that level of performance is not sustainable, Halvorsen has maintained a record of outperforming the market and his peers. For instance, in 2011, when the average hedge fund lost roughly 4%, Viking Global was up 7.80% (through December 23). Halvorsen has done this by sticking with a long/short global equity strategy combined with a bottom-up stock picking approach. (more…)

Louis Bacon, Moore Capital

Louis Bacon is the founder of Moore Investment Management. Bacon has an MBA degree from Columbia Business School. After graduating from the MBA program, he joined the sales and trading program at Bankers Trust. He also worked at Walter N. Frank & Co, New York Cotton Exchange, and Shearson Lehman Brothers before establishing Moore Investment Management. As of September 2011, his fund had approximately $14 billion worth of assets under management. Bacon is also ranked the 312nd richest Americans by Forbes, with a net worth of $1.4 billion. (more…)

Andrew Sandler joined Sandler Capital Management in 1991. The firm was founded by Harvey Sandler, Andrew Sandler’s father, in 1988. Andrew Sandler worked as an analyst in the hedge fund team from 1991 to 1997. Since 1997, he has worked as the portfolio manager for the flagship hedge fund of the company. He is also currently the head of the hedge fund business of the firm. Sandler has a BS in Finance from the Business School of the University of Wisconsin. He began his career in investments as a research analyst at Perry Partners. (more…)

Roberto Mignone established Bridger Management in July 2000, right before he turned 29 years old. Prior to that, Mignone co-founded Blue Ridge Capital with John Griffin in 1996 and worked at Julian Robertson’s Tiger Management LLC. Mignone’s strategy is to focus on a few positions and monitor them carefully. Mignone’s core positions include about 30 long positions, which are each limited to 5% of the portfolio initially and never get larger than 10%. (more…)

Berkshire Adds DirectTV, Liberty Media (Bloomberg)

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A) boosted its stake in DirecTV and added holdings of Liberty Media Corp. and DaVita Inc. after billionaire Warren Buffett hired stock picker Ted Weschler to help manage investments. Weschler oversaw investments in all three firms while running Peninsula Capital Advisors LLC, the hedge fund he wound down after agreeing to join Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire. (more…)

Lee Ainslie, Maverick Capital

Lee Ainslie launched Maverick Capital in 1993 after spending three years at Julian Robertson’s Tiger Management. Lee Ainslie is a pure long/short equity investor. He doesn’t trade bonds, currencies, commodities or options. He buys what he thinks will beat the market and he sells what he thinks will underperform. It’s as simple as that. On average, Ainslie keeps Maverick Capital’s net market exposure at around 49%. (more…)

Jeffrey Altman founded Owl Creek Asset Management in June 2001. Before that, Altman was a portfolio manager at Franklin Mutual Advisers, LLC, specializing in distressed securities. Altman used this experience to form the basis for Owl Creek’s investment strategy, which BusinessWeek described as “a distressed equity strategy along with a capital structure arbitrage strategy as a hedging technique.” In other words, Owl Creek’s portfolio is filled with big name performers alongside troubled companies that will likely be sold or acquired at some point. Owl Creek Asset Management was down roughly 13% through the end of November. (more…)

Martin Whitman is the founder of Third Avenue Management. Whitman stared his career on Wall Street by joining Shearson Hammill & Co as an analyst. Whitman was not interested in the short-term earnings and simple analysis on Wall Street. Whitman believes that underpriced companies can be found among those with strong balance sheets. Whitman was a Distinguished Management Fellow at Yale School of Management. The Whitman School of Management of Syracuse University is also named after him. (more…)

Dan Loeb, Third Point

Dan Loeb founded Third Point in 1995. Using an activist value-oriented investing style, the New York-based fund has enjoyed tremendous success. Loeb’s flagship fund returned 41.7% in 2010. Last year was less than stellar for Third Point, but it still managed to roughly break even, which is pretty good considering that the average hedge fund lost around 4% that year. Loeb certainly didn’t have any love lost with his investors. In fact, the size of his portfolio actually increased during the fourth quarter. According to its 13F filings with the SEC on February 14, Third Point went from a portfolio of 35 positions valued at $2.11 billion at the end of September to finish December with 40 holdings, collectively valued at just under $2.5 billion. (more…)

Chris Hohn is the Manager of the Children’s Investment Fund (TCI). It is an activist fund based in London. Hohn has had such success in the role that his fund received Eurohedge’s European Hedge Fund of the Year award in both 2004 and 2005. TCI maintains a relatively narrow portfolio – it had just 10 positions at the end of the fourth quarter – but it has a sizable portfolio. According to a 13F filed on February 14, it was valued at $1.94 billion at the end of December. (more…)

David Dreman founded Dreman Value Management in 1977. He has serves as the president and chairman of the company since then. Dreman has also published a large number of scholarly articles. He writes a column for Forbes Magazine and he has written four books. Dreman discussed contrarian investment strategies in most of these books. Dreman is also the co-editor of Journal of Psychology and Financial Markets. He is on the Board of Directors of the Institute of Behavioral Finance, an organization that publishes Journal of Behavioral Finance. (more…)

Leon Cooperman, Omega Advisors

Leon Cooperman is the Chairman and CEO of Omega Advisors, a hedge fund with approximately $6 billion in assets under management. Prior to founding Omega in 1991, Cooperman was the Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management. According to Forbes, Cooperman is the 242th richest American with a net worth of $1.8 billion.

Recently, Omega Advisors released its latest holdings in a 13F filing. Let’s take a closer look at the most bullish bets of the fund and decide whether investors should imitate these stock picks. (more…)

Joel Greenblatt, Gotham Capital

Joel Greenblatt founded Gotham Asset Management in 1985 with $7 million. Greenblatt primarily uses a value investing strategy focused on finding value in special situations, but he also uses a quantitative investment strategy, which he calls his “magic formula.” The strategy has been successful. Gotham Asset’s Formula Investing U.S. Value 1000 fund gained 1.7% in 2011, compared to a loss of roughly 4 percent for the average hedge fund. In spite of relatively modest success, Gotham Asset’s 13F portfolio increased dramatically in the fourth quarter. The fund went from having $613.79 million spread across 588 positions at the end of the third quarter to 644 holdings with a total value of $828.71 million at the end of the fourth quarter. (more…)

Chuck Royce, Royce & Associates

Chuck Royce founded Royce & Associates in 1972. The fund employs a value-based approach to invest in companies with small market capitalizations. According to Royce, the core business of his company is small-cap value investment. Royce looks for small-cap companies that are underpriced relative to its enterprise value. Most stocks in Royce’s portfolio have market caps of lower than $5 billion.

Recently, Royce released his latest holdings through a 13F filing. We will discuss his most bullish bets and decide whether it makes sense for investors to purchase these stocks. (more…)