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.
SAC’s Cohen considers settling civil case (CNBC)
Telecoms and healthcare were hedge fund sector’s major buys in Q4 (HedgeWeek)
S&P Capital IQ performs its hedge fund analysis quarterly in order to help investors understand what the most prominent US-based hedge funds are buying, holding and selling. “Our firm develops its analysis through an examination of SEC filings accessed via proprietary Excel based models. In turn, clients can use these models to better spot global trends in various asset categories and see what some of the largest investors are targeting,” says Tony Elyahou, senior director, S&P Capital IQ.
Ex-Goldman director Gupta’s insider trading conviction upheld (TheGlobeAndMail)
A federal appeals court upheld the conviction of former Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS) director Rajat Gupta, one of the biggest successes in federal prosecutors’ long-running probe to stop insider trading on Wall Street. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Gupta’s claim that wiretap evidence should not have been admitted to show that he leaked news about Goldman’s finances, including a crucial investment by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK.A), by phone to Galleon Group hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam.
New minister invested in hedge fund (TheStarPhoenix)
New Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford holds investments in an elite hedge fund that trades securities in the energy sector he will now oversee. According to his conflict of interest disclosure, Rickford owns an unspecified number of units in the Waratah One Fund, an investment vehicle administered by Toronto firm Waratah Advisors. The minimum buy-in for the fund is $500,000, but Rickford did not personally invest that amount. His share was pooled with others by his investment adviser.
Be Wary of Investing in Hedge-Fund-Like Mutual Funds (MoneyNews)
For investors who don’t have the millions of dollars required to invest in many hedge funds, there’s an alternative — mutual funds that deploy hedge fund strategies. Such funds had $286 billion of assets as of Dec. 31, soaring from $41 billion five years earlier. But be careful about investing in these mutual funds, writes Rob Copeland of The Wall Street Journal.The funds utilize complicated investment strategies that are difficult for investors to track, he says.
Why it makes sense for Larry Page to donate his billions to Elon Musk (Reuters)
Three years ago, with a post entitled “philanthropy isn’t for profit”, I expressed the hope that we had finally reached a turning point, and that people would “do good to do good, rather than simply declaring that the best way they can do good is to chase profit as zealously as possible”. And maybe I was right. That post was directed in part at Matthew Bishop, who had written a silly article asking whether International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) had done more good for the world than the Carnegie philanthropies. But this evening, when I ran into Bishop at an event for rich people in a swanky midtown club, he couldn’t bring himself to defend Larry Page, who said something similar at TED:
Jailed Hedge Fund Consultant Ordered To Pay $6.3M To SEC (Law360)
A New York federal judge on Tuesday ordered convicted former hedge fund consultant and government critic John Kinnucan to pay $6.33 million in a civil insider trading case brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In imposing a maximum triple penalty against the former Broadband Research LLC CEO, U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan noted Kinnucan’s “high degree of bad intent” and 2012 criminal conviction on allegations similar to those in the civil suit. “As Kinnucan’s conviction in the parallel criminal case demonstrates, his conduct was…
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