Each business day HedgeCo.Net keeps you informed with the top hedge fund industry news, opinion and insight from around the globe. From the latest hedge fund launches, to the impact of regulation, competition, and investor activism - we track the topics and people that make a difference to you.
Wall Street Journal – Down in the morning, up in the afternoon. Or is it the other way around? The topsy-turvy stock market is tough to read.
In the last year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has briefly been over 13,000 and below 8,000. The past month has felt like the Cyclone roller coaster on Brooklyn’s Coney Island — lots of ups and downs, the whole rickety thing feeling like it’s going to crash at any minute.
TIMES – The ups and downs of the Dow are making Wall Street’s so-called "smart money" look dopey. Hedge funds lost nearly $300 billion due to bad investments in the first nine months of the year, according to an analysis of return data by TIME.com.
If the losses stand it would be by far the worst year for these funds, which are unregulated and open only to high-net worth investors, since their returns began being tracked in the mid-1970s. "It’s not going to be a good year," says Peter Laurelli, vice-president at HedgeFund.net. "We can be pretty sure of that."
The calculation does not include gains some of the funds may have made in Monday’s rally, but analysts say that won’t be nearly enough to erase the hundreds of billions of dollars the funds are down. "The losses should concern every investor because these are supposed to be the smartest guys out there," says Charles Gradante, who is the co-founder of hedge fund advisory firm Hennesse Group. "If they can’t manage their investments how is average person with a 401(k) supposed to cope?"
CNBC – There is a new breed of funds moving into the clean technology sector – specialized hedge funds that have at least $750 million under management.
And they bring a new play – long and short – on the notoriously volatile sector.
But it remains to be seen whether playing the growth sector’s zigzags is more profitable than patient investment in the sector’s broader upward trajectory.
“It is an interesting philosophical difference,” notes Angus McCrone of London-based New Energy Finance, a leading provider of clean energy financial research.
“One is saying this is a huge growth story, let’s just put out money in and it will work out well in the long term, and the other is saying, well this is an exciting growth sector but there is going to be some big ups and downs, so let’s take advantage of the ups and the downs and try to get superior performance.”
