Hedge Fund and Insider Trading News: Richard McGuire, Eddie Lampert, Magnachip Semiconductor Corp (MX), Legacy Reserves Inc (LGCY), ORBCOMM Inc (ORBC), and More

This Activist Investor Should’ve Believed More in His Plan (Bloomberg)
Spoke too soon. The last time I wrote about our old friend Richard “Mick” McGuire, Activist Investor, I gave him credit for knowing how to make a buck, though I was admittedly dubious about the value of his so-called shareholder activism. In particular, I pointed to the 2017 returns of his hedge fund, Marcato Capital Management LP, which were stellar: up 21 percent.

Eddie Lampert Gets Another Shot to Keep Sears Alive (The Wall Street Journal)
Eddie Lampert Gets Another Shot to Keep Sears Alive. Sears Holdings Corp. isn’t dead yet, and billionaire Edward Lampert still has a chance to keep the storied retailer alive when he gets to face off with liquidators at a Monday auction.

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Hedge Fund Chairman Bill Miller Skeptical of ‘OVERDONE’ Ripple (Bitcoinist.com)
Miller Value Partners (MVP) chairman & CIO Bill Miller has reiterated his faith in Bitcoin while publicly voicing suspicion about Ripple. Miller Consolidates Bitcoin Holdings: Speaking to CNBC in an interview January 9, Miller, whose fund began buying up Bitcoin in 2014, said he had since “spun off” its Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash holdings into a separate fund. “We’ve retained about a ten percent weighting in Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash together, and the other 90 percent is now in a separate fund,” he told the network.

Hedge Funds Have Lost Their Rhythm (Bloomberg)
Efficient markets: Robin Wigglesworth has an article at the Financial Times about how algorithmic investing increases volatility, electronic trading leads to flash crashes, trend-following and volatility-targeting quantitative trading strategies are pro-cyclical, etc., the normal list of complaints. These complaints strike me as debatable—not that long ago people were worried that algorithmic trading created too little volatility—but plausible, and they are certainly the right category of complaints.