A Hedge Fund Veteran Mounts a Comeback (Institutional Investor)
John Thaler, who shut down his long-short equity hedge fund in 2015, is making a return to the hedge fund scene with an offering focused on telecommunications, media, and technology and backed by asset manager Wexford Capital. Thaler – who has ties to Julian Robertson Jr.’s Tiger Management because he previously worked at Tiger analyst Chris Shumway’s Shumway Capital – shut down JAT Capital in 2015 after eight years in business. Thaler returned to fund management in January of this year, joining Wexford as a portfolio manager of the Wexford Core Equities Fund.
Jim Simons’ Renaissance Fund Dumped Apple and Amazon and Boosted its Tesla Stake Last Quarter (Business Insider)
Renaissance Technologies, one of the largest and most successful hedge funds in history, cashed out its Apple and Amazon stakes and boosted its position in Tesla last quarter, according to a regulatory filing. RenTech, a quantitative hedge fund founded by Cold War codebreaker and MIT math professor Jim Simons, sold its roughly 193,000 Amazon shares and 979,000 Apple shares in the three months to June 30.
Ray Dalio’s Hedge Fund Invests $400M in Gold (WestFairOnline.com)
Ray Dalio appears to have contracted an advanced case of gold fever, as his Bridgewater Associates hedge fund invested more than $400 million in the metal during the second quarter. According to a Reuters analysis of the Westport-based firm’s 13F filings, Bridgewater bought 1.4 million shares in the SPDR Gold Trust, the equivalent of roughly 130,000 ounces of gold, and 4.1 million shares in the iShares Gold Trust, representing approximately 41,000 ounces of gold. Bridgewater now holds $914.3 million in the SPDR Gold Trust, up from nearly $600 million in the first quarter, and $268.4 million in iShares Gold Trust, up from $176 million.
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Brookfield Raises a Record $23bn During Q2 2020 (Opalesque.com)
The global alternative asset manager Brookfield Asset Management has raised a record $23 billion during the second quarter and expects to accelerate the pace of investments after the disruption caused by Covid-19. Chief executive Bruce Flatt said that Brookfield currently has $77 billion available to deploy as opportunities arise over the next 12 months. He stated, “We had our best fundraising period, ever; with $23 billion of capital added to our franchise, increasing total capital for deployment to $77 billion. Very strong performance in our asset management business and continued resiliency within most of our operations contributed to strong operating results.”
Pressure Grows on Norway’s New Wealth Fund Chief to Divest Hedge Fund Stake (Reuters)
OSLO, Aug 14 (Reuters) – The businessman appointed to lead Norway’s $1.1 trillion sovereign fund should not be allowed to take up the job unless he divests his holdings in a hedge fund, the opposition Labour Party told daily VG and broadcaster NRK on Friday. Norges Bank in March announced that Nicolai Tangen would take over the running of Norway’s rainy-day assets from September, while putting his own 43% stake in London-based AKO Capital into a blind trust. Tangen has ruled out selling his AKO stake.
Standing Out Among Peers (Hedge Nordic)
Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – There is one common perception that trend-followers are long volatility. Not every type of volatility, however, is necessarily suitable for trend-followers, as volatility can manifest itself in many shapes and forms. Mandatum Life Managed Futures considers this changing nature of volatility by using machine learning algorithms that select the right combination of trading models for a given environment. As a systematic fund, Mandatum Life Managed Futures allocates risk to various models including trend following. The sudden and wild coronavirus-driven market sell-off in March may have caught Mandatum’s artificial intelligence-assisted systematic vehicle by surprise, but the system quickly rebooted and started to capture trends in the volatile markets of the subsequent four months.
SS&C GlobeOp Hedge Fund Performance Index at 1.82 per cent in July (Hedge Week)
The gross return of the SS&C GlobeOp Hedge Fund Performance Index for July 2020 measured 1.82 per cent. Hedge fund flows as measured by the SS&C GlobeOp Capital Movement Index advanced 0.55 per cent in August. “SS&C GlobeOp’s Capital Movement Index for August 2020 rose 0.55 per cent, indicating positive net flows. On a comparative basis, the 0.55 per cent gain was higher than the 0.45 per cent increase reported for the same period a year ago and was also the largest net inflow for any month of August since 2016,” says Bill Stone, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, SS&C Technologies. “In the six months since Covid-19 has roiled markets and caused major economies to partially shut-down, hedge fund capital movements have been very stable by historical standards, indicating investor confidence in managers’ ability to generate attractive returns while managing risk.”
Friday 8/14 Insider Buying Report: RRR, HOG (Nasdaq.com)
On Wednesday, Red Rock Resorts (RRR)’s Chief Executive Officer, Frank J. Fertitta III, made a $6.65M buy of RRR, purchasing 450,000 shares at a cost of $14.79 each. So far Fertitta III is in the green, up about 6.7% on their purchase based on today’s trading high of $15.78. Red Rock Resorts is trading up about 2.8% on the day Friday. Before this latest buy, Fertitta III purchased RRR at 8 other times during the past twelve months, for a total cost of $35.06M at an average of $16.18 per share. And at Harley-Davidson (HOG), there was insider buying on Wednesday, by Chairman and Acting President Jochen Zeitz who bought 71,450 shares at a cost of $27.86 each, for a trade totaling $1.99M. Before this latest buy, Zeitz bought HOG on 2 other occasions during the past twelve months, for a total cost of $3.08M at an average of $20.66 per share. Harley-Davidson is trading off about 1.4% on the day Friday.
Zoom Video Communications Inc (ZM) CEO Eric S. Yuan Sold $33.2 million of Shares (Guru Focus)
CEO of Zoom Video Communications Inc., Eric S. Yuan, sold 140,286 shares of ZM on 08/12/2020 at an average price of $236.48 a share. The total sale was $33.2 million. Zoom Video Communications Inc has a market cap of $68.83 billion; its shares were traded at around $244.00 with a P/E ratio of 1435.30 and P/S ratio of 86.43. GuruFocus has detected 1 severe warning sign with Zoom Video Communications Inc.
Advance Auto Board Hit With Insider Trading, Stock Juicing Suit (Bloomberg Law)
The senior leaders of Advance Auto Parts Inc., North America’s top aftermarket car parts retailer, were hit with a Delaware lawsuit Friday claiming they spent years lying about its finances following a board coup by activist hedge fund Starboard Value LP while its CEO sold stock at inflated prices. Starboard-linked CEO Thomas R. Greco and board chairman Jeffery C. Smith, who is also Starboard’s CEO, ignored internal projections and “invented an earnings scenario” that was “a top down C-suite fallacy, a set of targets with no basis in reality,” the Chancery Court complaint says.
What Did This CEO Just Do with Personal Shares of Meritor (NYSE: MTOR)? (Analyst Ratings)
On August 12, the CEO & President of Meritor (MTOR), Jeffrey Craig, sold shares of MTOR for $6.41M. In addition to Jeffrey Craig, 2 other MTOR executives reported Sell trades in the last month. The company has a one-year high of $27.18 and a one-year low of $10.91. Currently, Meritor has an average volume of 427.22K. MTOR’s market cap is $1.82 billion and the company has a P/E ratio of 6.90.
Insider Trading has Become More Subtle (EconoTimes.com)
Insider trading comes in two main forms: arguably legal and clearly illegal. But, as with drugs in sport, it’s hard to tell when arguably legal ends and clearly illegal begins. It is generally accepted that it is wrong to buy shares in the company you run when you know something about it that the market does not. It’s especially wrong to buy shares when you are telling the market that things are much worse for the company than you know them to be.
