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West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – Despite the credit crunch, sixth formers at Sunningdale Preparatory School, near Ascot, Berkshire, have entered funds into a virtual trading competition… and their early efforts are beating the market. Far from being discouraged by the doom and gloom reported on a daily basis, their interest has been ignited.
William Brooks, Deputy Headmaster, is impressed. "The boys are enthused; they have opened accounts and are trading against each other and the staff. I recently showed some prospective parents around and they could not believe their eyes… two boys discussing what limit to place on their newly acquired Allied Irish stock." In the past, schools would introduce pupils to share dealing by referring to price lists in the daily newspapers, and tallying results by hand. But the internet has brought realistic trading simulations that bring real time reporting, automated paper trails and full historical records, all at the click of a button.
Brooks continued, "We looked at several alternatives but chose Stockopedia as it enables us to research, discuss and trade all from the same website. Using the site allows the boys to better understand market timing without risking real money, while the online community has helped to generate trading ideas."
Before the markets resumed their recent plunge to new lows, the Sunningdale sixth formers traded a rally in banking stocks and managed to exit profitably. Overall, the Sunningdale funds have outperformed the FTSE benchmark by 8.1% over the last month. At the end of March, the 2009 Stockopedia Challenge officially launches and both the boys and the staff are well placed for the prizes on offer, including flights to visit Wall Street.
Edward Croft, Managing Director of Stockopedia, is pleasantly surprised by the results. "Sunningdale’s performance to date has been impressive and one of their boys, Archie Bannister, 13, has been this week’s top performer. While the FTSE 100 has dropped 15% recently, his fund has made positive gains – making up 10% in the last week alone… it’s a very promising start." Croft is pleased that young people are using the site to learn to become more financially autonomous. "Recent scandals, like the Madoff affair, have shown that blindly trusting market professionals can be extremely dangerous – so it’s reassuring to see schools encourage independent thinking and analysis in this area at such an early age".
The Headmaster, Tom Dawson, is "delighted that the boys are filling in some of their free time in this way. My only concern is that they are proving far better investors than I am!"
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – Some analysts are saying that the mighty New York Times might be headed down the same path as the bankrupt Tribune Company, owner of the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times.
Hedge fund shareholders, Harbinger Capital Partners Funds and Firebrand Partners own 19% of the NYT Company, and the outlook does not look good. NYT is approximately $1 billion in debt, the result of its move to a new building on Eighth Avenue a couple of years ago.
Harbinger Capital Partners has grown to one of the 15 largest hedge funds, by assets, in America. Firebrand Partners is an operational activist firm that invests in publicly-traded companies whose brand equity represents significant upside relative to their market capitalization.
The NYT Company includes The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe and 15 other daily newspapers.
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Reuters – Final bids for the Chicago Cubs will likely be due late September or early October, two sources said on Thursday, as owner Tribune Co seeks to sell the storied baseball team by the year end.
The next stage in the drawn-out sale of the team, its landmark stadium and a cable TV network stake will be management presentations starting next week to give bidders more information on the assets, the sources said.
Those will likely take about two weeks, after which final bids will be sought.
Tribune, which owns the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times newspapers, put the Cubs assets on the block in April 2007 when it announced it would be bought by a group led by real estate magnate Sam Zell. It is selling the Cubs to cut debt it took on as a result of the leveraged buyout.
Zell said last month that of 10 groups that bid, five made it through the first round for the package of assets — the Cubs, Wrigley Field and an interest in SportsNet Chicago.
Washington Post – John W. Henry & Co., the investment firm run by the Boston Red Sox baseball team’s owner, is among hedge funds that in July suffered their worst drops in almost 18 months as oil and other commodities retreated from record prices.
John W. Henry lost 17 percent on its JWH GlobalAnalytics fund, the firm said on its Web site. Altis Partners’ $1 billion global futures program fell 18 percent, paring its gain for the year to 10 percent. London-based Man Group’s AHL Diversified Futures, the computer program that trades about $25 billion of investments, dropped 5.5 percent through July 28, or a loss of about $1.37 billion in the month.
Oil, natural gas, nickel and corn prices all tumbled in July, making it the worst month for the Reuters/Jefferies CRB Commodity Index in 28 years. The drops pushed commodities trading advisers to their biggest declines since March 2007, according to data compiled by fund tracker Barclay Hedge.
Bloomberg – John W. Henry & Co., the investment firm run by the Boston Red Sox baseball team’s owner, is among hedge funds that suffered their worst drops in almost 18 months in July as oil and other commodities retreated from records.
John W. Henry lost 17 percent on its JWH GlobalAnalytics fund, the firm said on its Web site. Altis Partners Ltd.’s $1 billion global futures program fell 18 percent, paring its gain for the year to 10 percent. London-based Man Group Plc’sAHL Diversified Futures Ltd., the computer program that trades about $25 billion of investments, dropped 5.5 percent through July 28, or a loss of about $1.37 billion in the month.
Oil, natural gas, nickel and corn prices all tumbled in July, making it the worst month for the Reuters/Jefferies CRB Commodity Index in 28 years. The drops pushed commodities trading advisers, which manage about $234 billion, to post their biggest declines since March 2007, according to data compiled by BarclayHedge, a Fairfield, Iowa-based fund-tracker. So-called CTA funds rose 8.3 percent in the first half, making them the best performing strategy in an industry that had its worst start to a year in nearly two decades.
