Popular Hedge Fund Stocks in Free Fall (InstitutionalInvestorsAlpha)
Monday’s market sell-off hit hard many of the stocks that are most popular among hedge funds — especially the Internet and media stocks that have driven the returns of some of the top long-short managers in the business, the so-called Tiger Cubs and Seeds that trace their roots back to Julian Robertson Jr.’s Tiger Management Corp. The stocks that suffered in Monday’s slide include Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), which dropped nearly 5 percent; Priceline.com Inc (NASDAQ:PCLN), down more than 3 percent; and Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), down more than 2 percent. Although three of these four stocks…
Hortonworks lands $100m round to grow Hadoop (ZDNet)
Enterprise Hadoop vendor Hortonworks has landed $100m in venture capital ahead of its planned IPO sometime next year. The investment round in the big data Hadoop provider was led by BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK) and hedge fund Passport Capital, and follows last week’s even bigger $160m round for rival Hadoop vendor Cloudera. Hortonworks’ existing investors include Tenaya Capital, Dragoneer Investment Group, Benchmark Capital, Index Ventures and Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO). The company was spun out by engineers at Yahoo where Hadoop was given birth.
Hedge Funds Trade Russia Conflict as Greylock Backs Ukraine (BusinessWeek)
As Russian president Vladimir Putin ratchets up tensions with the U.S. and its allies over the annexation of the Crimean peninsula, the geopolitical turmoil is prompting hedge funds to trade around the conflict. Carlyle Group LP’s Emerging Sovereign Group LLC, Greylock Capital Management LLC, LNG Capital LLP and GoldenTree Asset Management LP are unearthing opportunities from currency trades, Ukrainian sovereign and corporate debt to Russian bond investments. The crisis that started in November with a violent rebellion sparked by pro-European Ukrainians seeking a decisive break from the nation’s Soviet past, has split the country and provoked the tensest standoff between Russia and the West since the Cold War.
Five ‘Magic’ Greenblatt Strategy-Inspired Turnaround Stocks (Forbes)
About a year ago, I wrote a column about the Guru Strategy that I base on the “Magic Formula” approach of hedge fund star Joel Greenblatt. At the time, my Greenblatt-inspired 10-stock model portfolio had a strong long-term track record, but was coming off of two straight underperforming years. It had started to bounce back in late 2012 and early 2013, however, and I noted then that I wouldn’t be surprised to see it continue to rebound. After all, Greenblatt himself found that the formula will sometimes underperform the market for two, or even three years since it keys on unloved stocks of good businesses that usually are going through short-term troubles.
What a third country offers asset managers under AIFMD (HedgeWeek)
Andrew Baker, CEO of the Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA) – launching an AIFMD implementation guide jointly with PwC, said: “AIFMD is a complicated piece of legislation. It is being implemented in EU Member States in a variety of different ways, while non-EU or ‘third country’ jurisdictions are also taking differing approaches to it. This leaves hedge fund firms across the world facing a lot of complex choices.”[i] While Mr Baker represents the hedge fund sector, I would argue that his sentiments apply to the wider funds industry. Much wider; it is necessary for all asset managers that wish to market their funds in Europe to have considered all of the options available regarding AIFMD so that they can make a fully informed decision.
Hedge-Fund Divorce To Be Heard In London (Finalternatives)
A jet-setting hedge fund manager’s husband has won the right to pursue his divorce in the U.K.—where judges have proven extremely generous to the spouses of the rich. Weng Choy filed for divorce from Lena Tan, who has worked at WMG Advisors and Ward Ferry Management, two years ago in London. But Tan argued that the British had no jurisdiction over the 15-year-long marriage, given that they divide their time between London, Hong Kong and Malaysia.
