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 Daily News - Jacob Ezra Merkin was once revered as a wizard of Wall Street, an angel of charity and a lion of Judaic studies.
Now he has earned infamy as a destroyer of wealth, a menace to philanthropy, a pariah in some synagogues and a target of a probe by the state attorney general’s office.
A single unforgivable deed capsized his fortune, reputation and social standing overnight: He embraced a false prophet of profit named Bernard Madoff.
Reuters – Volatility spread across stock and foreign exchange markets on Tuesday as investors eyed a Federal Reserve meeting expected to cut interest rates and hint at future unorthodox monetary policies to lift the U.S. economy.
European stocks reversed early losses to put in solid gains after better-than-expected euro zone manufacturing data. The dollar firmed against the euro after earlier hitting a two-month low.
Oil was trading below $45 but was supported by expectations that OPEC will agree its largest supply cut ever later in the week.
The Fed is widely expected to cut interest rates to just 0.5 percent or lower. Futures markets are setting a two-thirds possibility of a 75 basis points cut to 0.25 percent.
London Free Press – The instability plaguing financial markets seems to have spilled over into the environment, making the winter forecast from Environment Canada a crapshoot of sorts, one of this country’s top weather gurus said yesterday.
And with the markets and federal political scene on a wild ride, senior climatologist David Phillips said Canadians are, for the first time in his career, more preoccupied with Ottawa and Bay Street than what’s falling out of the sky.
"I mean, my gosh, it seems to be politics right now or at least the economy, and weather’s taken the back seat," he said. "In this country, I never, ever thought I’d see that."
Barron – In the 1980s, Carl Icahn loomed large as a corporate raider, in the mold of the Gordon Gekko character in the movie Wall Street. Icahn made a lot of money but was vilified for what some considered a slash-and-burn approach to taking over companies.
Twenty years later, Icahn has morphed into a shareholder activist and rails against what he considers to be incompetence among senior executives and on boards. "They call me raider. They call me an activist," says Icahn, who, at 72, shows no sign of slowing down. "I don’t know what those labels mean. All I know is that something should be done to improve corporate governance and management. If we don’t, managements will remain unaccountable and our economy will suffer."
Thanhnien – The PXP Vietnam Value Fund will raise as much as $200 million to invest in undervalued stocks, Snowball said.
PXP, the initials of Phan Xi Pang, Vietnam’s highest mountain, is betting that the stock market will recover as inflation eases and the nation’s trade deficit widens at a slower pace. The benchmark VNIndex may double to 750 points by the end of 2009, Snowball said.
“In the long term, the story’s intact,” Snowball, 47, said in an interview in Ho Chi Minh City. “As long as the government handles the development of the economy and the market correctly – so far they’re doing a very good job – then I think we’re fine.
Reuters – Hedge fund managers could play a key role in jump starting the ailing U.S. economy if Washington offers them appropriate tax breaks, a prominent hedge fund industry lawyer said on Tuesday.
Sitting on billions of dollars in cash, dozens of hedge funds are looking for investments at the same time cash- strapped small and mid-sized companies search for new money to help them stay in business.
Together these unlikely partners could find a way to escape a debilitating liquidity crisis that threatens to push the country further into its deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression, Perrie Weiner, a partner at law firm DLA Piper told Reuters in an interview.
"There is a way out, but the answer lies not with the current government rescue plan, but rather with hedge funds," Weiner, who advises dozens of hedge funds as international co-chair of DLA Piper’s Securities Litigation group said one day before speaking about the topic at an industry conference.
Financial Times – Hedge fund managers who earned more than $1bn last year, including George Soros and Philip Falcone, are being summoned to Capitol Hill on Thursday to testify under oath about the potential risks their firms pose to the broader economy.
The hearing before the House oversight committee, headed by Democrat Henry Waxman, marks one of the few instances in which the largely unregulated hedge fund industry will be subject to questions by lawmakers.
Reuters – European shares climbed on Friday while most Asian shares fell as investors sought to balance economic worries with a new era of lower interest rates ahead of key U.S. jobs data.
Oil dropped briefly below $60 a barrel before bouncing back to nearly $62 and the dollar was generally weaker.
The latest U.S. non-farm payrolls report is widely expected to show the world’s largest economy continuing to bleed jobs. The median forecast of economists polled by Reuters last week is for payrolls losses of 200,000 in October.
Investors have found few consistent havens except for the yen and some government bonds, with the financial crisis expected to see the world’s developed economies headed for the first full-year contraction since World War Two.
North County Times – The stock market is retreating, credit markets are squeezed and many corporate earnings are diving. But one piece of the mangled U.S. economy is making an improbable comeback: the dollar.
As the financial meltdown clobbers world economies from South America to Asia, investors desperate for safe assets are plowing money into the battered buck —- helping it snap a six-year slide and reclaim its long-held status as a stable asset during rough times.
"The dollar has become the safe-haven play," said Kathy Lien, director of currency research at Global Forex Trading in New York. "It’s a pretty monumental move we’re seeing" and" reflects a "crisis of confidence."
While the U.S. economy by no means is showing signs of a recovery, Lien said other countries are "just beginning to feel the magnitude of the global slowdown, whereas the U.S. is maybe three-quarters of the way through. "What everyone is beginning to realize is that, yes, the U.S. is in trouble. But it’s also much further along (in the crisis) and probably closer to stabilizing than Europe and other regions," Lien said.
Arlington Heights Daily Herald – In a typical recession, stocks start recovering about six months before the economy does. The crisis the United States is in right now, however, is anything but typical: Lending is frozen, hedge-fund selling is happening on a massive scale, and economic troubles have spread all over the globe.
As a result, it’s possible the U.S. economy will need to show signs of strength before the stock market stabilizes and regains steam. So with readings getting darker by the day, expect more of the same this week: extreme volatility.
"Volatility’s here, and it’s here to stay," said Ryan Detrick, senior technical strategist at Schaeffer’s Investment Research. Last Friday, the Dow Jones industrial average finished down 312 points, "and it seemed like a victory."
Los Angeles Times – In a typical recession, stocks start recovering about six months before the economy does. The crisis we’re in right now, however, is anything but typical: Lending is frozen, hedge-fund selling is happening on a massive scale, and economic troubles have spread all over the globe.
As a result, it’s possible the economy will need to show signs of strength before the stock market stabilizes and regains steam. So with readings getting darker by the day, expect more of the same this week: extreme volatility.
The Street – Forced selling by hedge funds is behind the late-day market volatility these days, Jim Cramer told the viewers of his "Mad Money" TV show Thursday.
He fears we may never see a bottom until the selling comes to an end.
Cramer said many hedge fund strategies have just been dead wrong, such as the betting on a Chinese recovery after the Olympics that failed to materialize. As evidence, he used the Baltic Dry Shipping Index and the Shanghai Composite Index to graphically show how much China’s economy has slowed.
The result of hedge funds gone bad is forced selling, he said. At around 2:45 p.m. each day, hedge funds begin preparing for the next day’s round of redemptions by liquidating their ill-conceived positions.
