Hedge Fund Titan Sees a Quantamental Future (Bloomberg)
We all suffer from cognitive biases. Paul Marshall says he’s prone to optimism bias — he’s “too easily romanced by new stories and new opportunities.” He says his financial partner, Ian Wace, succumbs to the gambler’s fallacy, expecting market dislocations to disappear rapidly as prices revert to their mean. But neither trait has prevented them from building Marshall Wace LLP into one of the world’s biggest hedge funds, overseeing more than $44 billion and making billions for themselves in the process.
$30 Billion Citadel Just Poached an AQR Exec for a New Leadership Role to Supercharge Billionaire Ken Griffin’s Bond Trading Team (Business Insider)
Billionaire Ken Griffin has poached another executive from a top rival. Griffin’s Citadel has recruited AQR‘s head of trading Isaac Chang to be the Chicago-based firm’s first-ever head of execution trading for Citadel’s fixed-income business, the firm confirmed to Business Insider. He will join the firm in September. The $30 billion hedge fund is also adding a top Two Sigma tech executive to its team to handle everything “post execution”, Business Insider reported in May.
Bill Miller’s Record-Setting Fund Beat the Market for 15 Straight Years. He Breaks Down the Trio of Forces that has Him Bullish on Stocks — and Lays Out a ‘Home Run’ Trade He’s Making Right Now. (Business Insider)
Investors who beat the market on a consistent basis are few and far between. Legends like Warren Buffett, Jim Simons, Joel Greenblatt, and Peter Lynch are among the few who took the seemingly impossible and made it a reality. Bill Miller, the founder of Miller Value Partners, is cut from the same cloth. From 1991 to 2005, Miller trounced the S&P 500 employing his value-based theorem. Today, he has a sanguine view of where things are headed.
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Ex-Bridgewater CEO Disputes Objective Bridgewater Criteria That Pay Women Less (Deal Breaker)
Eileen Murray has moved on from Bridgewater Associates, to the less-Principled pastures of FINRA and HSBC. Well, almost moved on. Bridgewater Associates and former co-Chief Executive Officer Eileen Murray are still negotiating an exit package three months after she left the world’s biggest hedge fund — a fight that has dragged on because Bridgewater’s offer is both less than what has been paid to men who left the firm and below the status of her position, one of Murray’s advisers said…. Her adviser, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the situation, said this was the third time since 2017 that Bridgewater offered her compensation that was lower than male colleagues at comparable levels.
Barclays Hedge-Fund Risks Made it ‘Beyond Saving,’ Abu Dhabi Sovereign Wealth Fund Exec Says (FNLondon.com)
David Forbes, who worked at a firm running the fund and was close to the bank’s 2008 bailout, told the court that he was concerned. The Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund was advised against investing in Barclays at the height of the financial crisis due to the bank’s hedge-fund liabilities. The stance against the bank came from a former director at the International Petroleum Investment Company, which used to run Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, the High Court learned on 15 July in the latest twist in Amanda Staveley’s £1.5bn case against the lender.
Putnam Fund Trims Bet on Depressed Mall Debt at Loss (The Wall Street Journal)
A Putnam Investments bond fund is under pressure from an expensive wager on America’s depressed shopping malls. The Putnam Diversified Income Trust entered into hundreds of millions of dollars in complex financial contracts tied to a mortgage-linked index with a concentration in malls. The fund trimmed its bet at a loss in recent months.
Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger were ‘Sidelined in Fear’ During the Coronavirus Crash, Investor Bill Smead Says (Business Insider)
Berkshire Hathaway‘s CEO and vice chairman failed to capitalize on the coronavirus crash because they were too afraid, longtime investor Bill Smead wrote in his second-quarter shareholder letter this week. “We are huge fans of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, but it is unlikely they have been more scared by economic circumstances in my lifetime than they were in March through May,” Smead Capital Management’s portfolio manager said. The “most brilliant value investors of all time” were “sidelined in fear and trapped out by size considerations,” Smead continued, referring to the pair’s challenge in finding deals that can move the needle at a $450 billion conglomerate.
Thursday 7/16 Insider Buying Report: PSTX, AZZ (Nasdaq.com)
At Poseida Therapeutics, a filing with the SEC revealed that on Tuesday, Director David Hirsch bought 250,000 shares of PSTX, at a cost of $16.00 each, for a total investment of $4M. Bargain hunters have the opportunity to bag PSTX even cheaper than Hirsch did, with shares trading as low as $13.75 in trading on Thursday — that’s 14.1% under Hirsch’s purchase price. Poseida Therapeutics is trading up about 10.5% on the day Thursday. This buy marks the first one filed by Hirsch in the past year. And on Wednesday, President & GM – Electrical Ken Lavelle purchased $169,565 worth of AZZ, purchasing 5,500 shares at a cost of $30.83 each. AZZ is trading up about 4.3% on the day Thursday. Lavelle was up about 5.4% on the buy at the high point of today’s trading session, with AZZ trading as high as $32.51 in trading on Thursday.
Axonics Modulation Technologies Inc (AXNX) CEO Raymond W Cohen Sold $1.9 million of Shares (Guru Focus)
CEO of Axonics Modulation Technologies Inc, Raymond W Cohen, sold 50,000 shares of AXNX on 07/14/2020 at an average price of $38.42 a share. The total sale was $1.9 million. Axonics Modulation Technologies Inc has a market cap of $1.56 billion; its shares were traded at around $39.83 with and P/S ratio of 32.94.
A Major Shareholder at Standard Diversified (NYSE MKT: SDI) is Selling Shares (Analyst Ratings)
Today, a Major Shareholder at Standard Diversified (SDI), Standard General L.P., sold shares of SDI for $17.07M. The company has a one-year high of $20.95 and a one-year low of $6.50. Currently, Standard Diversified has an average volume of 41.03K. Standard General L.P.’s trades have generated a 12.0% average return based on past transactions. DailyInsider proprietary algorithm detects trades by the most influential insiders and selects attractive trading opportunities daily.
Penumbra Inc (PEN) CEO and President Adam Elsesser Sold $1.5 million of Shares (Guru Focus)
CEO and President of Penumbra Inc, Adam Elsesser, sold 8,000 shares of PEN on 07/13/2020 at an average price of $191.9 a share. The total sale was $1.5 million. Penumbra Inc designs, develops, manufactures and markets medical devices. The products of the company address ischemic stroke, hemorrhagic stroke and vascular conditions that can be treated through thrombectomy and embolization procedures.
