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.
Reuters – Mellon Capital Management, which invests money for pension funds and others, plans to launch a new hedge fund in August, a top executive said on Tuesday.
The new portfolio, which is slated to become the group’s flagship hedge fund offering, will invest in currencies, commodities, stocks, bonds and derivatives.
"This will be the first time that Mellon Capital will offer clients a commodity alpha source," said Eric Goodbar, the firm’s hedge fund strategist.
istockAnalyst.com – I’ve always been a fan of what are now called "alternative investments" and never really cared as much for "generic index style equities", although I have owned them of course. Property, commodities, gold and higher yield instruments were always more interesting to me once I began to understand how imbedded inflation really was in the modern world.
Now that I am retired and living on my money, my "business" is to generate income as a goal more important than capital gains. Increasingly I am working on the great divide between tax-deferred and taxable accounts in the US, now and for the future. Perhaps we should call them "totally taxable" and "partly taxable" accounts since every penny one takes out of the IRA or 401K is taxable while only gains and dividends and interest are taxable from the taxable accounts.
New York Times – The managing director of a collapsed Chicago hedge fund, Lake Shore Asset Management, was indicted by a federal grand jury. Prosecutors say the director, Philip J. Baker, operated a $300 million fraud.
The 27-count indictment was unsealed on Monday, said Patrick J. Fitzgerald, a United States attorney, in a statement on Tuesday. An arrest warrant has been issued for Mr. Baker, but his whereabouts are unknown, Mr. Fitzgerald said.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission accused Mr. Baker in a civil lawsuit last year of having defrauded at least 700 investors by hiding trading losses. The commission won court orders banning Lake Shore from commodities trading.
Mr. Baker said that Lake Shore had a long history of trading success, though it lost about $38 million from 2002 to 2007, according to the indictment.
Alibaba News Channel – Hedge fund firm 36 South said on Monday it had launched a "high risk/high return" fund designed to protect investors’ portfolios against a surge in global inflation. The Excelsior fund will target returns of five times the rate of inflation in the G5 group of economies, if that inflation rate exceeds 5 percent, by buying long-dated out-of-the-money options across assets such as equities, commodities, currencies and interest rates, the firm said in a statement.
However, if the rate of inflation stays below 5 percent then investors could lose all their money, a spokesman said.
"Inflation is the single greatest risk facing the world economy at present," said 36 South director and founder Jerry Haworth.
"Whilst the prevailing view is that a sustained period of significant global inflation is unlikely, investors need to be attuned to this risk and the devastating effect it will have on their portfolio should this scenario come to pass."
Bloomberg – Yale University and Harvard University may have to cut investments in hedge funds and private equity because the risks of holding the hard-to-sell assets outweigh the returns, said Bill Gross, co-chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Co.
“The Yale and Harvard portfolios, which have succeeded enormously over the past 10 or 20 years in terms of the emphasis on illiquidity and private investments and risk-taking — you have to question that model,” Gross said yesterday at an industry conference in Chicago.
The two Ivy League schools had more than half of their endowments in hedge funds, private equity, real estate and hard assets such as commodities at June 30. Gross, who manages the $150 billion Pimco Total Return Fund, the world’s biggest bond mutual fund, recommended in March buying securities that provide stable income this year rather than more speculative and illiquid investments, as slowing economic growth and higher unemployment depress returns.
NineMSN – Ospraie Management is launching two funds focusing on commodities and other liquid securities just eight months after it was forced to close its flagship fund amid huge losses on commodities trades.
The US hedge fund’s move, announced in a letter to investors, is a sign of growing confidence within the hedge fund industry.
"After much reflection and with a number of lessons learned, we see a set of opportunities today that we believe could create significant value for investors in coming years," Dwight Anderson, Ospraie’s founder, wrote in a letter last week obtained by the Financial Times.
Seeking Alpha – If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. This cliché is the root of folly on Wall Street and in the hedge fund industry in general. Perfect example: The Ospraie Fund’s Dwight Anderson is set to start two new hedge funds in July. Okay, new hedge funds, what’s the big deal? Well, the problem here is that Dwight Anderson lost 39% in his Ospraie Fund in 2008 and had to liquidate the fund. At its peak, Ospraie managed $3.8 billion in commodities. But if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. And, that’s exactly what Anderson is set to do.
Anderson will open two new hedge funds in July of 2009, the first of which will focus on stocks of commodity and basic materials companies (The Ospraie Equity Fund). He will also open a fund focused on commodities and derivatives (The Ospraie Commodity Fund). Anderson said that he is starting these funds because he sees significant opportunities in this market, as significant as he has ever seen in his 15 years of investing. These funds will have reduced fees where investors will pay half as much as the typical hedge fund. His new funds will charge a 1% management fee and a 10% performance fee.
Bloomberg – BlueGold Capital Management LLP and Galena Asset Management Ltd. extended their winning streak in the first four months, outpacing competing hedge funds and commodities.
Pierre Andurand’s $1.1 billion BlueGold energy fund rose 35 percent through April, two people with direct knowledge of the returns said, declining to be named because the data are confidential. Galena’s $430 million metals fund added 8.6 percent, according to David Mimra, London-based head of sales and marketing.
Bloomberg – Dwight Anderson, the commodities investor who liquidated his main Ospraie Fund last year after losing 39 percent, is planning a comeback with two new hedge funds set to open July 1.
The Ospraie Equity Fund will buy and sell stocks of commodity and basic-materials companies in industries such as chemicals, mining, paper and natural resources, Anderson said in a May 12 letter to investors. The Ospraie Commodity Fund will invest in commodities and related derivatives, according to the letter, a copy of which was obtained by Bloomberg News.
Opalesque – The Australian Fund Monitor (AFM) released last week its “March Absolute Return and Hedge Fund Review” report which showed that the strong rebound in equity markets both in Australia and overseas saw equity-based hedge funds managed in the region post not only their best returns this year, but for the past three years.
AFM took the results of all funds – including non-equity strategies such as Global Macro and Commodities, and including funds of funds, and found that all had posted the best result in March since the start of the Global Financial Crisis in 2007.
With the ASX posting an impressive rebound in March of over 7%, which continued in April, equity-based hedge funds (with 85% of funds results reported) returned 3.18%. Over the past 12 months, equity-based hedge funds returned a negative 13.20%, against the ASX 200 which lost 33.11% and the S&P500 which fell 39.68%.
Bloomberg – Octagon Capital Management Pte, run by former managers of the Government of Singapore Investment Corp.’s quantitative-investment group, plans to start a fund that seeks to profit from broad economic trends.
Octagon, which uses computer models to pick trades, will raise money “in the near future” for a quantitative macro fund that wagers on currencies, equities, interest rates and commodities in Asia, said Lam Poh Min, 39, co-founder of the Singapore-based hedge-fund firm, in an interview. The firm is looking for a “more opportune time” to start the fund, Lam said yesterday.
Seeking Alpha – Usually when Wall Street talks about hard assets, they’re talking about precious metals or commodities, things you can touch or feel or consume.
But hard assets can mean other things – things that bring pleasure like art, vintage cars or rare stamps. Let’s call them ‘real’ assets’ or ‘stable assets.’
So what’s happening to real assets in this volatile environment? Demand is booming. But compelling values still exist.
“Rare diamond and gemstone prices have been steadily rising and auction houses have been selling investment grade gemstones at record sales” reports Reuters.
