Saturday, November 27, 2010

Level Global, Diamondback Capital, and Loch Capital raided by Feds

As part of an insider trading probe, Federal investigators have recently raided the offices of several hedge fund managers, including Level Global Investors, Diamondback Capital Management and Loch Capital Management LLC. According to the Wall Street Journal, the authorities had warrants but the investigations are still ongoing.


Diamondback Capital is led by Larry Sapanski and Level Global Investors is led by David Ganek and Anthony Chiasson, all of whom were previously senior portfolio managers at Steven A. Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors. No reports have indicated SAC Capital's potential involvement, but the firm has been subpoenaed.


Read Full Article

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

John Paulson’s Paulson & Co reconsiders big bets on bank rally

John Paulson, who has been bullish on a banking rally since the economic recovery began, seems to have re-thought parts of his strategy this quarter. His multi-strategy hedge fund Paulson & Co. recently disclosed that it had significantly reduced its stakes in several large American banks, including Citigroup (NYSE: C), Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC), and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), The New York Times reports. At the end of the third quarter, Mr. Paulson cut 18% percent of his holdings in Bank of America, selling 30 million shares as their value fell 8.8%. He also sold 16% of his holdings in Citigroup, 11% of his Wells Fargo stake and 29% of his JP Morgan Chase shares.

Notably, Paulson & Co. abandoned Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) entirely as it sold out of all of its GS holdings. Paulson & Co. was founded in 1994 by current president and senior fund manager John Paulson. The hedge fund behemoth currently has $33 billion in assets.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Hedge Fund Job Report: George Weiss, SAC Capital, Touradji Capital, Elliot Management, Armajaro, Soroban Capital

In this week’s hedge fund job report, we review senior management changes that were recently made at Paul Touradji’s Touradji Capital Management and Paul Singer’s Elliot Management, as well as portfolio manager additions that were made at George Weiss Associates and Armajaro Asset Management. Notably, both the George Weiss and Armajaro additions were brought aboard to launch new hedge funds. Finally, we also cover several senior additions at Steven A. Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors and Eric Mandelblatt’s emerging fund management firm Soroban Capital.


First up is George Weiss Associates, which has poached Brenda Reed from Fidelity Investments’ London Office. While at Fidelity, Ms. Reed managed the mutual fund giant’s Fidelity Global Focus Fund, which has more than one billion in assets under management. At George Weiss Associates, she will reportedly be the lead portfolio manager for a yet to be launched global long/short equity hedge fund.

Steven A. Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors has also recently hired a Fidelity veteran. SAC Capital poached Venk Kidambi from Fidelity Capital Markets where he was Head of Financial Engineering. Mr. Kidambi is now a director of Algorithmic Research at SAC Capital. The multi-strategy behemoth has also recently hired Bruce Roscherr as a quantitative strategies focused portfolio manager. Before joining SAC Capital, Roscherr was a Portfolio Manager at Citi Alternative Investments.
Read Full Article / See Current Hedge Fund Job Postings

Friday, November 12, 2010

All Credit to Moore Capital for This Year's Bounce Back

One of the biggest decisions that hedge fund managers in any investment style have to make is how they respond to significant losses, even if they are relative in nature. So think back to the response last year of Paul Tudor Jones in reconfiguring the capital allocations within his funds. Even though he made good money in 2009, his flagship BVI Global Fund was up 16.51% last year, he rejigged allocations - reducing some systematic strategies, cutting out some emerging market exposure altogether and increasing the classic opportunistic trading element. This was intended to be something of return to its roots for the Global Fund, as John Tudor Jones himself managed a bigger proportion of the assets, and macro in total was re-emphasized as it made up 88% of Fund assets from the 3Q of last year. The call was that the markets environment would be more suitable to that big-picture type trading that served Tudor Investment Corporation so well in the 90's, as QE created a time-warp.

See Complete Article

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Och-Ziff Capital Reports Gains & Future Plans

Och-Ziff Capital Management Group gave a glimpse into its investment progression Tuesday when hedge fund manager Daniel Och revealed that the fund will push its, “investment track record, transparency and infrastructure as the key drivers to furthering our competitive differentiation over time.”
See Complete Article

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Tiger Management’s Julian Robertson loves Apple

In an interview on CNBC this morning, Tiger Management’s Julian Robertson revealed that he remains hot on Apple Inc. (AAPL). Robertson believes that the company’s stock price could potentially surge to 25 to 30 times earnings over next 12 months. He said that such a high valuation is not inconceivable, since Apple is quite possibly the greatest company in the world.
See Complete Article