Gibbins’ Autonomy Hedge Fund Takes Further Losses in January (Bloomberg)
Losses at Robert Gibbins’s hedge fund continue to mount. Autonomy Capital Research LLP’s flagship global macro fund declined 6.6% in January, according to people with knowledge of the matter. This follows a 26% slump last year, its biggest since the financial crisis, after a series of ill-timed bets on Latin America, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the details are private. The fund has been trading about 2.5% higher so far this month, one of the people added.
Voted Best Two Years in a Row (Hedge Nordic)
Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – Low-net long/short equity fund Alcur has been named the “Hedge Fund of the Year” by Swedish business magazine Privata Affärer for a second consecutive year. Alcur, which reached its 15-year anniversary this January, returned 5.3 percent in 2021 following an advance of 18.8 percent in 2020, the fund’s best year on record. “The hedge fund Alcur manages to live up to the “market-neutral” label and becomes the Hedge Fund of the Year for the second year in a row,” writes Privata Affärer.
What Warren Buffett Might Say About the $12 Million Gold Cube in Central Park (Acorns)
An artist promoting his cryptocurrency placed a 410-pound gold cube in Central Park last week. The stunt recalls a Warren Buffett analogy from 2011 where he imagined all of the world’s gold forged into a $9.6 trillion cube the size of a baseball infield. The cube wouldn’t produce anything, pay you any money, or do anything but sit there, Buffett wrote.
Macro Hedge Funds Gain in Volatile January, Says HFR (Hedge Week)
Macro hedge funds posted strong, negatively-correlated gains in January as equity and fixed income markets suffered steep losses, while investors positioned for sharp interest rate increases and generational inflationary pressures to begin 2022, with investable HFRI 500 Macro Index advancing +1.35 per cent for the month. The gains in Macro combined with narrow gains across fixed income Relative Value Arbitrage strategies partially offset weakness in higher-beta, directional strategies, as the HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index (FWC) declined -1.7 per cent for the month, topping the sharp decline of the Nasdaq by over 700 basis points.
Intel Launches $1bn Fund to Support Tech Startups (Opalesque)
Intel is launching a $1 billion fund to support early-stage startups or other companies building technology for the foundry ecosystem. That could include novel intellectual property, software tools, chip architecture, or advanced packaging, all with the common theme of technology that speeds products to market. The fund was announced following a collaboration between Intel’s venture capital arm Intel Capital and its recently launched Intel Foundry Services (IFS) business. The IFS business will use the chipmaker’s semiconductor fabs to produce processors for other companies, such as cloud providers, based on their own custom designs.
Hedge Fund Millions Are at Stake in Sculptor CEO Pay Dispute (Bloomberg)
What’s the appropriate pay for a hedge-fund manager? It depends on who you ask. In an industry where the highest earners reap billions of dollars a year, the most public salary fight right now is over the hundreds of millions earmarked for Sculptor Capital Management Inc.’s Jimmy Levin.
Investing in the New Global Infrastructure Economy (Preqin)
Biff Ourso and Andy Deihl of Nuveen Infrastructure discuss the changing landscape of private infrastructure post-COP26 and where the firm is seeing opportunities. Following COP26 in Glasgow, how can private infrastructure investments play a role in the transition to a low-carbon economy? Biff Ourso: There’s no doubt that the agreements coming out of COP26 will continue to generate a policy environment conducive to clean and renewable energy globally. One area we see expanding in particular is the offshore wind space, not only in Europe where a fair amount of investment has been made historically, but in the Americas and Asia-Pacific too.
A Beginner’s Guide to DAO, Killer of Corporate Structure and Hedge Funds (The Street)
A group of crypto enthusiasts last November shocked the world by raising tens of millions of dollars to buy a rare version of the U.S. Constitution, which was auctioned off by the venerable auction house Sotheby’s. If ConstitutionDao lost on the wire against the billionaire hedge-fund manager Ken Griffin of Citadel, it won a symbolic victory, engraving in the collective memory the arrival and power of DAOs and a new form of investing.
VC Valuations Climb Higher Still as Hedge Funds and Other Nontraditional Investors Pile In (Institutional Investor)
Hedge funds and other nontraditional investors are pumping more money than ever into venture capital deals — driving valuations to new heights, according to PitchBook. Early-stage valuations, which includes series A and series B, have gotten so high that they are beginning to resemble the late-stage valuations of previous years. In 2021, the median early-stage pre-money valuation reached $45 million, a 50 percent increase from 2020, PitchBook said in its annual U.S. VC valuations report.
Tuesday 2/8 Insider Buying Report: DUOT, DX (Nasdaq.com)
On Friday, Duos Technologies Group’s , Norman H. Pessin, made a $1.2M buy of DUOT, purchasing 300,000 shares at a cost of $4.00 each. So far Pessin is in the green, up about 20.0% on their purchase based on today’s trading high of $4.80. Duos Technologies Group is trading up about 1.3% on the day Tuesday. And also on Friday, CEO and Co-CIO Byron L. Boston purchased $201,348 worth of Dynex Capital, purchasing 12,600 shares at a cost of $15.98 a piece. Before this latest buy, Boston purchased DX on 2 other occasions during the past twelve months, for a total cost of $129,998 at an average of $17.96 per share. Dynex Capital is trading up about 1.6% on the day Tuesday. Boston was up about 4.1% on the buy at the high point of today’s trading session, with DX trading as high as $16.63 in trading on Tuesday.
Bill Ackman just spent $1.1bn on Netflix stock. Should I buy the shares too? (The Motley Fool)
Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who manages the FTSE 250-listed investment trust Pershing Square Holdings, is one of the biggest names in the investment world. It’s not hard to see why – during Covid, he turned $27m into a massive $2.6bn in what has been called the “single best trade of all time”. Recently, it has come to light that Ackman spent $1.1bn on Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) shares after the stock’s post-earnings pullback in January. Ackman bought near the $390 mark, picking up 3.1m shares. Should I follow the hedge fund manager and buy Netflix stock myself? Let’s take a look.
The SEC is Pushing the Limits of Insider Trading Enforcement (Fortune)
Underscoring the SEC’s newly aggressive enforcement agenda, chair Gary Gensler recently dusted off the combative words of the agency’s founding chair, Joseph P. Kennedy, who some 85 years ago announced his intent to “make war without quarter on any who sell securities by fraud or misrepresentation.” Already, the SEC has begun to make good on that threat, pushing the boundaries of insider trading liability. However, the jury is still out on where those limits lie, as two recent cases have shown.
