The Wealth Tax that Democrats and Republican Billionaires Both Support (CNBC)
Hedge fund manager and longtime Republican supporter Leon Cooperman published an op-ed in Wednesday’s Financial Times that said while he opposed a wealth tax, he supports eliminating a feature of the tax code known as the “step-up in basis” for capital gains. The step-up basically allows billionaires to pass billions of dollars to their heirs or to charity without ever paying taxes on it. Former Vice President Joe Biden and other Democratic presidential candidates agree the step-up should be eliminated as do other billionaires including Stan Druckenmiller.
CQS Makes the Case for Credit (Institutional Investor)
The hedge fund firm headed by Michael Hintze sees opportunities in a wide variety of markets in the second half of the year. CQS is mostly bullish on credit.The London hedge fund firm headed by Sir Michael Hintze told clients it has a “constructive” thesis on the asset class for the second half of 2019. “Dispersion continues to provide substantial opportunity to make returns in credit,” Hintze said in his mid-year review for clients.
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Italy’s Intesa Clinches 10 billion Euro Soured Loan Deal with U.S. Hedge Fund (Reuters)
MILAN (Reuters) – Italy’s biggest retail bank Intesa Sanpaolo (ISP.MI) has clinched a deal with U.S. hedge fund Davidson Kempner over 10 billion euros ($11 billion) in problem loans, moving closer to a 2021 target of cutting soured debts to 6% of total lending. In reporting a higher-than-expected net profit for the second quarter, Intesa on Wednesday said it would sell 3 billion euros in so-called ‘unlikely-to-pay’ (UTP) loans to Prelios, a loan recovery specialist owned by the New York-based fund.
Credit Manager Phase3 Preps Volatility Fund (HFAlert.com)
Phase3 Capital, founded last year by a former Citadel portfolio manager, is launching a second strategy. The Glenview, Ill., firm, led by Ethan Youderian, plans to begin trading a credit-volatility vehicle later in the third quarter. Phase3’s flagship fund pursues a mix of credit-focused strategies including relative value and volatility. The new fund will target investments that are too complex for many traders and too small for big alternative-investment managers. While details about the strategy are sketchy, it appears the fund will seek to profit primarily from low credit-market volatility.
Silver Point’s Kaftan joins Heard Capital (Opalesque.com)
Priya Kaftan has joined Heard Capital as head of investor relations and product strategy. Kaftan joins the firm from Silver Point Capital where she was previously a senior associate. Heard Capital is a Chicago-based fund that invests in six sectors – technology, media, telecommunications, financial, industrial, and energy. William Heard, founder, CEO, and CIO of the firm says that Kaftan’s hire is the latest step in an effort to create a foundation that will allow Heard Capital to scale. “[Kaftan] brings valuable guidance to our team on meeting investors evolving needs,” Heard said.
Steven Cohen Charges Into Chiasma (Guru Focus)
Further expanding his holdings in the health care space, billionaire investor Steven Cohen (Trades, Portfolio), who leads Point72 Asset Management, disclosed a 5.24% stake in biotech company Chiasma Inc. (NASDAQ:CHMA) on Tuesday. The guru’s Stamford, Connecticut-based hedge fund uses long, short, macro and systematic strategies to generate risk-adjusted returns. According to GuruFocus Real-Time Picks, a Premium feature, Cohen invested in 1.6 million shares of the Waltham, Massachusetts-based company on July 29, dedicating 0.04% of the equity portfolio to the position. The stock traded for an average price of $5.56.
Hedge Funds Continue To Enjoy The Brexit World They Helped Create (Deal Breaker)
Who could have guessed that the elevation of a pathologically lying buffoon to Number 10 Downing Street in advance of the most consequential and probably catastrophic moment for the United Kingdom since Dunkirk could have a negative effect on one of the things that Brexiters most prize, the pound Sterling? Well, uh, pretty much anyone, of course. But who among them is best-positioned to engineer such an outcome, and then profit from it, much like they helped engineer Brexit (and profit from it) in the first place? Why, hedge fund managers and other traders, of course.
SEC Bars Hedge Fund Manager Charged with Asset Mismarking and Insider Trading (HedgeCo.net)
(HedgeCo.Net) The Securities and Exchange Commission has obtained a final judgment against a hedge fund manager the agency charged with falsely inflating assets in portfolios he managed. The SEC also barred him from the securities industry. According to the SEC’s complaint, filed June 15, 2016, Christopher Plaford, a resident of Bedford, N.Y., and fellow hedge fund manager Stefan Lumiere engaged in a fraudulent scheme to falsely inflate the value of securities held by a hedge fund advised by their firm. For an 18-month period, Plaford and Lumiere allegedly used sham broker quotes to mismark as many as 28 securities per month, surreptitiously passing their desired prices along to brokers via Lumiere’s personal cell phone or a flash drive delivered by a courier.
Wednesday 7/31 Insider Buying Report: RMM, NSC (Nasdaq.com)
On Friday, Rivernorth Managed Duration Municipal Income Fund (RMM)’s President, Patrick W. Galley, made a $200,000 purchase of RMM, buying 10,000 shares at a cost of $20.00 a piece. Rivernorth Managed Duration Municipal Income Fund is trading trading flat on the day Wednesday. And on Monday, Director Jennifer F. Scanlon purchased $100,546 worth of Norfolk Southern Corp (NSC), purchasing 525 shares at a cost of $191.52 each. This purchase marks the first one filed by Scanlon in the past twelve months. Norfolk Southern Corp is trading off about 0.1% on the day Wednesday. Scanlon was up about 0.7% on the purchase at the high point of today’s trading session, with NSC trading as high as $192.81 at last check today.
Insider Trade Overview: The Liberty Braves Group (BATRA) Buys and Sells (Antony Press)
On July 30, 2019, The Liberty Braves Group (NASDAQ:BATRA) shares gained 0.69% or 0.2 points to close at $29.08 with a thin trading volume of 103.913 thousand shares. It opened the trading session at $28.83, the shares rose to $29.55 and dropped to $28.78, the range by which the price of stock traded the whole day. The company now has a market cap of $23.6 billion and currently has 813.02 million outstanding shares. The Liberty Braves Group (BATRA) stock has accumulated 4.6 percent of market value in 21 trading days.
Spirit Airlines Inc (SAVE) President and CEO Edward M Christie Iii Bought $99,584 of Shares (Guru Focus)
President and CEO of Spirit Airlines Inc (30-Year Financial, Insider Trades) Edward M Christie Iii (insider trades) bought 2,375 shares of SAVE on 07/30/2019 at an average price of $41.93 a share. The total cost of this purchase was $99,584. Spirit Airlines Inc is an airline company. The company provides air transportation for passengers. It’s all all-Airbus fleet operates more than 385 daily flights to over 56 destinations in the United States, Caribbean and Latin America. Spirit Airlines Inc has a market cap of $2.92 billion; its shares were traded at around $42.62 with a P/E ratio of 8.10 and P/S ratio of 0.83. Spirit Airlines Inc had annual average EBITDA growth of 11.00% over the past ten years. GuruFocus has detected 2 severe warning signs with Spirit Airlines Inc.
A Director at Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) is Buying Shares (Analyst Ratings)
Yesterday, a Director at Twitter (TWTR), David Rosenblatt, bought shares of TWTR for $73.2K. This recent transaction increases David Rosenblatt’s holding in the company by 41.94% to a total of $3.91 million. Following David Rosenblatt’s last TWTR Buy transaction on May 10, 2019, the stock climbed by 2.6%.
Daily Insider Ratings Round Up 7/25/19 – With New Tables (Seeking Alpha)
On Today’s Tables: Insider trades were rated Significant at: Esperion Therapeutics (ESPR), and; Century Bancorp (CNBKA). Insider trades were rated Nearly Significant at: Crown Castle (REIT) (CCI), and; American National Bankshares (AMNB).
SEBI Fines IIFL for Violating Stock Brokers Norms (DeccanHerald.com)
Markets regulator Sebi on Wednesday imposed a fine of Rs 3 lakh on IIFL Securities Ltd for violating code of conduct for stockbrokers. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) conducted a probe in suspected insider trading by one of the clients of stockbroker IIFL Securities, earlier known as India Infoline Ltd. During the course of an investigation, Sebi observed that IIFL accepted orders in the trading account of its client, Vimala, from a person other than the client without obtaining proper authorisation and only on the basis of verbal instructions.
