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New York (HedgeCo.net) – The SEC’s case against Raj Rajaratnam and his hedge fund Galleon Management LP, is sending ripples throughout the industry, as the use of wiretapping and its effects are emerging.
According to Bloomberg, an unidentified informant began setting up interviews and taping the conversations, leading to the uncovering of the alleged massive insider trading scheme that generated more than $25 million in illicit gains.
The SEC also charged six other hedge fund managers with insider trading, including senior executives at major companies IBM, Intel and McKinsey & Company.
“This complaint describes a web of fraud that has been unraveled,” said SEC Chairman Mary L. Schapiro.
“What we have uncovered in the trading activities of Raj Rajaratnam is that the secret of his success is not genius trading strategies. He is not the astute study of company fundamentals or marketplace trends that he is widely thought to be.” said Robert Khuzami, Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “He cultivated a network of high-ranking corporate executives and insiders, and then tapped into this ring to obtain confidential details about quarterly earnings and takeover activity.”
Reuters – HSBC’s Bill Maldonado is a man who loves to mix science with art — be that in running the Halbis hedge fund business, riding his high-powered Ducati motorbike on a race track or piloting a light aircraft.
An Oxford doctor in laser physics who trod the well-worn path from academia to high finance, Maldonado resisted the obvious choice of becoming a quant, writing computer programmes for trading strategies — instead opting to transfer his number-crunching skills into a more "front office" role in fund management.
Dallas Morning News – An investor in a Perot family hedge fund has sued the Perot Family Trust and several related parties, saying they grossly mismanaged the fund, which went bust in November after starting the year with $2.5 billion in net assets.
Southern Avenue Partners LP said the fund – Bermuda-chartered Parkcentral Global Hub Ltd. – collapsed despite reassurances to investors that its trading strategies would protect it from deep losses. The hedge fund didn’t hedge, the complaint alleges.
"As a result of defendants’ breach of fiduciary duty, the Global Fund imploded," said the lawsuit, referring to Parkcentral Global Hub. "The Global Fund’s net asset value went from over $2.5 billion to less than zero.
The Ledger – The financial crisis may have turned much of Wall Street’s wealth into dross, but a select group of hedge fund managers has managed to maintain a golden touch that might make King Midas blush.
As major markets and economies careened downward last year, 25 top managers reaped a total of $11.6 billion in pay by trading above the pain in the markets, according to an annual ranking of top hedge fund earners by Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine, which comes out Wednesday.
James H. Simons, a former math professor who has made billions year after year for the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, earned $2.5 billion running computer-driven trading strategies. John A. Paulson, who rode to riches by betting against the housing market, came in second with reported gains of $2 billion. And George Soros, also a perennial name on the rich list of secretive moneymakers, pulled in $1.1 billion.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) - The AlphaMetrix STTI tracker fund, launched in mid-December 2008 by AlphaMetrix LLC currently has approximately $70 million under management, with additional commitments from large institutional investors expected in the coming months, according to the company. In January 2009, its first full month, the fund was up 1.94%.
"Short-term strategies have little to no correlation to any traditional or alternative investments, making them appealing to investors seeking to add pure ‘liquid alpha’ to their portfolios," said Aleks Kins, CEO of AlphaMetrix. "Further, the Short-Term Traders Index includes a wide range of diversified trading strategies, with each CTA heavily vetted, highly liquid and completely transparent."
Interest in short-term trading strategies is rising for many reasons, including unease over the lack of liquidity in other alternative investments such as hedge funds, the counter party guarantee offered by the exchange-traded derivatives market, historically strong risk-adjusted returns, limited downside risk and low volatility.
"The index is a highly practical application of our research into the best ways to construct portfolios,” said Galen Burghardt, head of research for Newedge. “We expected short-term futures traders to demonstrate valuable diversifying properties, and we have been very satisfied with the results. We expect the index to produce results that continue to be uncorrelated to every major asset class and expect the average correlation of returns in the index to remain low. As a result, we expect the index to track returns in this space with very low volatility."
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Absolute Return – Assets for new hedge-fund launches fell "significantly" in the U.S. last year as hedge funds had their worst-ever year of performance, according to hedge-fund magazine Absolute Return.
"With these results, it’s no surprise that 2008 is being dubbed hedge funds’ worst year," deputy editor Carolyn Sargent said. "Turbulent markets, big losses, fund closures and the Madoff scandal have put investor loyalty to the test. Most investors are staying on the sideline, but those who are allocating capital can demand more favorable investment terms."
The financial crisis spurred investors to convert holdings to cash, and some funds faced unexpected disruptions to their trading strategies, including temporary bans on selling stock short.
