Reuters – Hedge fund manager William Ackman helped send Realty Income Corp (O.N), a real estate investment trust, down 4.5 percent on Wednesday after he identified it as good stock to bet against, analysts said.

Ackman, who manages $4.8 billion and whose investment ideas are closely followed in the markets, spoke at a conference in Texas on Tuesday where people who heard him speak said he identified Realty Income Corp as a possible stock to short.

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Tags: hedge-fund-manager, investment ideas, real estate investment

West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – Hedge fund tech. and brokerage provider, Merlin Securities, formed a new equity sales coverage and content division, the Merlin Institutional Group.

Headed by Jesse Cole and Bryan Miller in New York, the group will focus on delivering traditional institutional equity sales coverage and content to medium and large hedge funds. The group will provide clients with services such as corporate access, company modeling and trading ideas.

“Merlin Institutional Group represents an important development for Merlin,” said Stephan Vermut, founder and managing partner of Merlin. “We have built our reputation on providing excellence in prime brokerage, reporting, trading, and operational support for our clients. With the addition of this new team, we will now be in a position to provide clients with investment ideas, research and modeling. Jesse and Bryan ….are recognized in the industry for their expertise, and we are delighted to welcome them to Merlin.”

Jesse W. Cole joins Merlin from Schonfeld IBS, where he was a member of the institutional sales and trading group since its inception in 2004. Bryan Miller was most recently with the institutional research sales and trading group at Collins Stewart.

Merlin Secutities was recognized as the #1 prime broker for funds less than $1 billion by Alpha magazine’s 2008 hedge fund service provider survey for the second year running.

Alex Akesson

Tags: accredited-investors, bryan miller, content division, institutional equity sales, institutional group, institutional research, institutional sales, investment ideas, operational support, palm-beach, prime broker, prime brokerage, sales coverage, service provider survey, trading group, w cole

West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – Hedge funds returned a healthy 1% in January, wrapping up a tumultuous 2008 at -12.3%, according to Eurekahedge. Hedge fund assets fell $380 billion or 20% in 2008, from just under $1.9 trillion to just over $1.5 trillion.

Eurekahedge’s forecast expects to see more hedge fund start-ups in the near future, given the increasing number of people moving out of investment banks (whether voluntarily or otherwise) to venture into the hedge fund space.

In terms of returns, hedge funds are in a better position to generate superior returns than most other conventional managers and market players, owing to the flexibility that hedge fund managers enjoy, the Eurekahedge report says, their ability to identify new trends and investment ideas and act on them promptly.

"We anticipate trend-following strategies to continue benefiting from market movements across the currency and commodity markets, as they had through most of 2008. We expect the equity markets to remain volatile and range-bound over the next few months, but long/short managers could potentially benefit from pockets of opportunities (even if short-term ones) on both the long and the short side, given the uncertainty around the 4Q08 earnings reports and deeply discounted valuations across most sectors."

Tags: accredited-investors, commodity-markets, earnings reports, eurekahedge, fund-assets, hedge-fund-managers, hedgeco, investment ideas, investment-banks, new trends, palm-beach, pockets, sectors, start ups, trillion, uncertainty, ups, valuations