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.
Economic Times - Gold, the traditional safe haven in times of economic turmoil, proved to be more a commodity that everyone loved to hate last year even amid the turbulence that engulfed world markets.
But as 2009 gets under way the yellow metal has found huge traction with money managers. In the last eight sessions, gold has rallied as much as $100 an ounce to hit a near four-month high of $915.30 on Monday — in spite of a rising dollar.
Times Online – Hedge funds were accused by MPs yesterday of gambling against the taxpayer when they bet that the share prices of British banks would fall.
Appearing before the Treasury Select Committee, four leading hedge fund managers were told by John McFall, the committee’s chairman: “You’re snubbing the public; not only that, but you’re making shedloads of money.”
The hedge fund heavyweights — Paul Marshall, of Marshall Wace, Douglas Shaw, of BlackRock, Chris Hohn, of TCI, and Stephen Zimmerman, of NewSmith Capital Partners — came under particular attack over the practice of short-selling, only a day after it emerged that Paulson & Co, a renowned American hedge fund, had made an estimated £270 million in profits from betting against Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) , which is majority-owned by the State.
While media-shy TCI founder Chris Hohn and others will face tough questions from the Treasury Select Committee on financial stability, short-selling and other issues, it nevertheless seems that the pro-legislation lobby’s position may be weaker than it has been in recent years.
For one thing, many hedge funds simply do not have the financial clout — and therefore carry the associated risks seen by some politicians — that they once did.
Times Online – Mark Twain said that visiting a fortune-teller “was just as good as going to the opera, and the cost scarcely a trifle more — ergo, I will disguise myself and go again”. But he was visiting a clairvoyant at the height of 19th-century America; today in Britain, he’d be as likely to find himself talking to a hedge fund manager if he was seeking enlightenment about the future — and it might not be as much fun, either.
Hedge fund managers have made a healthy living in the past from predicting trends, but it is a precarious business at the best of times, and now is not the best of times. Few are willing to put money on what will happen to their industry in the future. True, despite 2008 being the worst year on record for the industry, they are bullish, claiming that it will survive and, in the long term, flourish, but after that things get complicated. There are almost as many opinions on how the industry will need to change to achieve this as there are investment strategies.
Seattle Times – The big stories in the mutual-fund world are always taking shape, but the new year gives us a chance to gaze into the crystal ball to try to read future headlines.
Performance stories always rule the day — and I don’t make market forecasts, leaving that task to people willing to volunteer for the job of village idiot — so maybe it will be a good year if the economic crisis winds up serving as the backdrop for the developing stories, rather than continuing to dominate the news itself.
Here are the fund-world stories that could capture the headlines in the year ahead:
MSNBC – Nonprofits that are struggling because their donors lost money with Bernard Madoff are getting a bailout — but not from the government. Richer foundations are stepping in to help.
Human Rights Watch, The Center for Constitutional Rights and others are already slated to receive more than $1 million in help from philanthropies and donors who share their interests.
