Renaissance Clients Exit After Firm’s Anemic Run of Results (Bloomberg)
For years, Renaissance Technologies was among the most exalted names in high finance, as close to a sure-thing as Wall Street had. But recent months have battered its reputation, and investors are now streaming to the exits. Renaissance has seen at least $5 billion in redemptions since Dec. 1 — a once-unthinkable rebuke from clients after unprecedented losses from the East Setauket, New York-based firm.
Billionaire Investor Stanley Druckenmiller Says He Owns Bitcoin as a ‘Sort of a Plaything’ – and Millennials Look at it the Way He Views Gold (Business Insider)
US billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller says he owns some bitcoin, and it may well be a new asset class. “I do own some of it,” he said in a recent episode of Talks with Goldman Sachs. “It’s gone up a lot since I bought it. It’s just sort of a plaything. I don’t really believe in it. I don’t really not believe in it. It could be a new asset class. The answer is – I don’t know.” Bitcoin rose 13% to a record high on Monday after Tesla disclosed that it spent $1.5 billion to buy the popular cryptocurrency. The token was last trading around $43,725.51, smashing its previous all-time high near $41,000 set in January.
Crispin Odey Predicts The “Bubble” Will Pop Soon But Warns Not To Short Yet (Forbes)
Odey Asset Management had a rough 2020 even as stocks rose, and most hedge funds had a decent year. Data from HFM Insights shows that the average hedge fund was up more than 12% in 2020. However, Crispin Odey‘s fund, which was betting on a downturn, declined 3% in December alone, bringing its full-year return to -26.1% for 2020.
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Legendary investor Bill Miller has set up his flagship fund to buy into Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (Business Insider)
Legendary investor and noted Bitcoin bull Bill Miller endorsed cryptocurrencies yet again on Monday. SEC filings revealed Miller set up his flagship fund, the Miller Opportunity Trust, to invest in Grayscale Bitcoin Trust to gain exposure to the cyrptocurrency market. “The Fund may seek investment exposure to bitcoin indirectly by investing in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, an entity that holds bitcoin,” management wrote in an SEC filing.
High Returns from Low Risk (Hedge Nordic)
Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – Long/short equity fund Alcur, the oldest fund in Alcur Fonder’s three-fund family, has been named the “Hedge Fund of the Year” by Swedish business magazine Privata Affärer. The low-risk fund launched in early 2007 advanced 18.8 percent in 2020 to achieve its best year on record, bringing its annualized return since inception to 5.6 percent. Motivating the decision to grant Alcur the “Årets Hedgefond” award, Privata Affärer writes that “the low-risk fund has delivered a positive return in 80 percent of all months since inception – an unbeatable result.” The magazine also added that “Alcur had a return of 19 percent in 2020 despite being a low-risk fund. The fund managed to advance when the pandemic struck markets in March, while almost all other funds retreated.”
Blackstone Invests in New Hedge Fund ApaH Capital, Sources Say (Reuters)
BOSTON (Reuters) – Blackstone Group, the world’s largest hedge fund investor, is committing $150 million in start-up capital to a hedge fund run by a former senior executive at Lone Star Funds, two sources familiar with the matter said. Anand Balakrishna Madduri is launching ApaH Capital Management with roughly $200 million in assets, including the capital from Blackstone, one of the people said.
Elliott Management Explores Raising a SPAC (The Wall Street Journal)
Elliott Management Corp., the hedge fund best known for its high-profile shareholder-activist campaigns, is looking to join the sizzling SPAC craze. The firm, founded by billionaire Paul Singer, has been meeting with bankers about raising more than $1 billion for a special purpose-acquisition company, according to people familiar with the matter. They cautioned the process is at an early stage and plans could change.
Supporting Asset Managers to Meet Their ESG Reporting Obligations (Hedge Week)
As sustainability regulation ramps up in Europe, the ESG reporting requirements for asset managers and their products are due to increase sharply. Although new regulations are due to come into force in March 2021, there is still significant uncertainty around what managers will be expected to do. In this changing environment, it is a time for service providers to offer new forms of support to the asset manager community. “The practicalities of what managers are required to disclose are still not clear. Therefore, managers need a starting point; they need a business partner to discuss the way forward and be committed to finding solutions that will work for them,” explains Birgitte van den Broek, managing director, CSC Netherlands.
Two Sigma, DE Shaw Posted Losses in Some Funds in January: FT (Bloomberg)
Two Sigma Investments and DE Shaw are among the quant hedge funds that suffered losses in some funds in January as retail investors on Reddit fueled market swings, the Financial Times reported. New York-based Two Sigma lost 5.3% in its Absolute Return fund and 8.6% in its Absolute Return Enhanced fund, the newspaper said, citing people who have seen the numbers. Its Compass macro fund and risk premia funds were about flat last month, one of the people told the Financial Times.
How Real Estate Investing Is Changing in the ‘Untact’ Era (Preqin)
COVID-19 created once-in-a-lifetime headwinds for global private capital markets. With whole countries forced into isolation, the pandemic all but stopped human contact and changed the way individuals carry out their daily activities. It is therefore unsurprising that this virus had a massive direct impact on the commercial real estate market around the world: only about a third of the usual transaction volume was recorded in Q2 2020. Since physical due diligence was and is still virtually impossible in many countries, investors had to postpone the closing of their ongoing deals and projects for most of last year.
Notable Insider Buys Of The Past Week: Harley-Davidson, Texas Instruments And More (Benzinga)
Outlook Therapeutics Inc (OTLK) had a 10% owner and a director both increase their stakes last week. They acquired 11.36 million shares altogether, at a secondary offering price of $1 per share. The stock closed most recently at $2.18 per share. A beneficial owner recently indirectly acquired around 4.22 million Vyne Therapeutics Inc (VYNE) shares at $2.37 apiece. That totaled about $10 million and boosted the owner’s stake to over 27.09 million shares. The stock closed most recently at $2.75 per share, after popping 39% for the week.
Monday 2/8 Insider Buying Report: HOG, AFG (Nasdaq.com)
On Thursday, Harley-Davidson’s CEO, Jochen Zeitz, made a $1.00M purchase of HOG, buying 30,800 shares at a cost of $32.47 each. So far Zeitz is in the green, up about 8.2% on their buy based on today’s trading high of $35.14. Harley-Davidson is trading up about 2.6% on the day Monday. Before this latest buy, Zeitz purchased HOG at 3 other times during the past year, for a total cost of $5.07M at an average of $23.00 per share. And at American Financial Group, there was insider buying on Friday, by Senior VP & General Counsel Vito C. Peraino who purchased 2,500 shares for a cost of $96.39 each, for a total investment of $240,975. This purchase marks the first one filed by Peraino in the past year. American Financial Group is trading up about 1.7% on the day Monday. Peraino was up about 6.7% on the buy at the high point of today’s trading session, with AFG trading as high as $102.83 in trading on Monday.
Meridian Bioscience Inc (VIVO) CEO John P. Kenny Sold $1,000,000 of Shares (Guru Focus)
CEO of Meridian Bioscience Inc, John P. Kenny, sold 40,000 shares of VIVO on 02/05/2021 at an average price of $25 a share. The total sale was $1,000,000. Meridian Bioscience Inc is an integrated life science company. It is engaged in development, manufacture, sale and distribution of diagnostic test kits for certain gastrointestinal, viral, respiratory and parasitic infectious diseases.
Charles Schwab (NYSE: SCHW) Executives are Making Moves with Their Shares (Analyst Ratings)
Yesterday, the Chairman of Charles Schwab (SCHW), Charles Schwab, sold shares of SCHW for $9.1M. Over the last month, Charles Schwab has reported another 3 Sell trades on SCHW for a total of $22.81M.
