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.
New York (HedgeCo.net) – In a Sunday Times article this weekend, Bryan Collings, who manages the Investment Fund for Ingnis International Hexam Global Emerging Markets, predicted an increase in the price of precious metals of 25% over the next 18 months. He forecasts that the price of gold will rise 20% to $1,200 an ounce by 2010. Remarkably, other commentators are predicting an even more significant rise to $1,500 an ounce within the next two years.
Gold was pushed to its highest level in the last six months because investors are keen to buy gold as a hedge against inflation. Gold has always been seen as a good investment in times of economic uncertainty. With continued concerns about inflation, the gold markets show no signs of cooling unlike the currency markets which continue to fluctuate.
Jason Cozens, Managing Director of Au, the online gold exchange said, “This is consistent with our predictions for the price of gold as investors are undoubtedly keen to buy gold at the moment. We are seeing an increase in enquiries from all kinds of investors. Media reports, like the Sunday Times article, are encouraging investors and we believe that it is prudent for individuals to invest up to 40% of their total portfolio in gold”.
Similarly, the price of other precious metals has soared since the beginning of the year. Silver has also strengthened with figures from the S&P GSCI Silver index showing a gain of 46.4% since the start of 2009. Copper has risen 102% since the beginning of the year and experts are predicting that with a shortage in supply and growing demand the price will continue to go up. Uranium prices are also expected to rise with an increase in demand for the metal, which is used in the production of nuclear energy.
Reuters – Billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson’s big stake in AngloGold Ashanti is a strand of his heavy exposure to gold and not designed to gain from the slim chance of a merger bid.
Before making billions of profits shorting mortgages and banks in 2007 and 2008, Paulson & Co bought and shorted stocks involved in mergers and other corporate events.
Yet mining giant AngloGold is out of bounds to all but its largest rivals as a takeover candidate, industry observers say, and Paulson’s 12 percent stake in the group can hardly be a bet its shares will rise on the back of a bid.
Philadelphia Inquirer – The University of Pennsylvania’s endowment fund lost a lot less than other big Ivy League schools during the grim financial year ended June 30.
That’s a switch for the better at the West Philadelphia campus of the city’s biggest private employer, which trailed its peers during the financial-asset inflation of the mid-2000s.
Penn had ranked last among the 25 largest university endowments in the year ended June 30, 2008, with a 6 percent decline, according to the yearly performance numbers posted by the National Association of College and University Business Administrators.
Evening Standard – A prominent hedge fund manager has claimed that gold investment is proving popular in the US over fears about inflation.
Moonraker, a London-based independent firm, has managed over $330 million worth of assets at BDO Stoy Hayward Investment Management since September 2003.
The company carried out a survey of 22 US hedge fund managers and found that 20 have bought gold bullion because they expect quantitative easing to push prices higher. Read Complete Article
Commodity Online – A prominent hedge fund manager has claimed that gold investment is proving popular in the US over fears about inflation.
Moonraker, a London-based independent firm, has managed over $330 million worth of assets at BDO Stoy Hayward Investment Management since September 2003.
The company carried out a survey of 22 US hedge fund managers and found that 20 have bought gold bullion because they expect quantitative easing to push prices higher.
A prominent hedge fund manager has claimed that gold investment is proving popular in the US over fears about inflation.
Moonraker, a London-based independent firm, has managed over $330 million worth of assets at BDO Stoy Hayward Investment Management since September 2003.
The company carried out a survey of 22 US hedge fund managers and found that 20 have bought gold bullion because they expect quantitative easing to push prices higher.
Daily Times – (Islamabad) The government intends to establish hedge fund under Trade Policy 2009-12 to keep the cost of capital, production cost and also account for inflation so that export orders remain within the projected cost. In order to attract international investors in a time of uncertain security, the Trade Policy would also offer life insurance cover to international buyers intending to visit Pakistan. The government would provide inland freight subsidy to export-oriented industries so that transportation charges from industries to shipment destinations is kept at a minimum.
Insurance Cover: Official sources informed that it is important to encourage international buyers visiting Pakistan so that local industries are able to fetch export orders. He said that in the course of policy formulation, the ministry is examining to provide insurance cover to international buyers intending to visit Pakistan for signing import-export contract with local export-oriented industries.
Bloomberg – Gold climbed in Asian trading as equity gains and an improving economic outlook boosted demand for the metal as a hedge against accelerating prices.
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index of equities gained for a sixth day after an index of leading economic indicators in the U.S. topped projections, indicating the country may be emerging from recession. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the central bank “will need to tighten monetary policy” to prevent inflation.
Korea Herald – The CEO of Korea Investment Corp. said yesterday the company would invest $1 billion in inflation-hedging assets such as price-linked bonds, commodities and real estate assets as part of its exit strategy, amid rising concerns over possible "hyper inflation." The nation’s sovereign wealth fund received $3 billion from the Finance Ministry in July, of which it will spend $2 billion in investing in traditional overseas bonds and stocks, and the remaining $1 billion in new alternative investments like inflation-hedging assets.
With the $3 billion included, the KIC now manages a $27.8 billion fund, of which $17 billion came from the Bank of Korea and 10.8 billion from the Finance Ministry.
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.
MONACO (Reuters) – Former Insight Investment fund managers Patrick Armstrong and Ana Cukic-Armstrong have launched a new fund management business that will invest in a broad range of assets and seek to beat inflation.
The firm, Armstrong Investment Managers, will try to combine hedge fund-style flexibility with the liquidity and lower fees of traditional asset management. It will launch funds for retail, high net worth and pension fund investors at the end of the summer, Patrick Armstrong told Reuters on Tuesday.
The pair were co-heads of the multi-asset group at Insight Investment, now owned by Lloyds Banking Group. They ran around 1.2 billion pounds in assets including the Diversified Target Return fund, which over the past three years fell 2 percent, beating an average 11 percent fall among peer funds.
"We think there is a middle ground between traditional funds and hedge funds," Armstrong said. "Hedge funds have been opaque, illiquid and had very high charges."
Seeking Alpha – Continuing our series of hedge fund profiles and biographies, we turn our attention now to Lee Ainslie of Maverick Capital. We thought this transition was appropriate given how we just yesterday initiated our profile series with coverage of hedge fund legend Julian Robertson of Tiger Management. (We also covered Robertson’s big inflation bet as well). We turn to Lee Ainslie of Maverick Capital now because Ainslie formerly worked under Julian at Tiger. As such, he is a ‘Tiger Cub’ and employs much of the investment methodologies he learned while at Tiger as their technology analyst.
Ainslie graduated from the University of Virginia and then received his MBA from the University of North Carolina. He founded Maverick Capital at age 29 in 1993 with $38 million in seed capital from Texas entrepreneur Sam Wyly. Maverick has offices both in Dallas and New York and now managers well over $5 billion. They are a long/short equity hedge fund in the ‘old school’ sense of the word.
