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.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – HedgeCo Networks announced the creation of a new Hedge Fund Calculator Professional Services team. The team consists of experienced graphic designers, hedge fund marketers and consultants, CAIAs and CFAs.
The HedgeCo Hedge Fund Calculator has been in use by HedgeCo.Net for over 7 years, creating tens of thousands of hedge fund performance reports. In the first ninety days after its inception, the HedgeCo Hedge Fund Calculator gained widespread recognition and attracted hundreds of hedge funds who generated thousands of analytical reports.
"The addition of our Professional Services team will make our offering incredibly compelling, especially for managers aiming to save time, cut costs and produce high quality performance reports for their investors and prospective investors," stated Aaron Wormus, Managing Director of HedgeCo Networks. "The combination of ground-breaking technology and relevant expertise enables us to create reports with a lead time of as little as 24 hours. Managers no longer need to spend countless hours and thousands of dollars on complicated software. We consult with each client individually to produce personalized reports at a fraction of the price of other solutions in the marketplace."
HedgeCo Networks LLC manages HedgeCo.Net along with a portfolio of nine other websites devoted to alternative investments. With over 25,000 active members, HedgeCo.Net offers a vast array of hedge fund services, including website design, consultation, and third-party marketing and seeding. The Company has consulted or helped to launch over 500 new hedge funds, both onshore and offshore. HedgeCo Networks was founded in 2001 by Evan Rapoport and Andrew Schneider.
Bloomberg – U.S. regulators are investigating whether investors manipulated end-of-day stock prices to avoid being forced by their brokers to sell holdings.
These gaps, which caused the Dow Jones Industrial Average to swing as much as 104 points this month in the final minute of trading, suggest investment firms faced with client redemptions and plunging markets may be gaming the closing-auction system. The discrepancies spurred the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, which oversees 5,000 brokerages, to look for evidence that investors are improperly swaying prices.
General Electric Co., McDonald’s Corp. and the 28 other Dow companies swung 0.6 percent on average at the close the last two weeks, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s almost eight times greater than the average three months ago. Because of the swings, the New York Stock Exchange plans to distribute information on the closing auction more often to help mitigate volatility.
Reuters – Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, which has watched Morgan Stanley’s share price plunge 58 percent last week, is seeking more favorable terms to its $9 billion deal, a person briefed on the matter said.
The Japanese lender will still buy a 21 percent stake from Morgan Stanley for $9 billion, but will amend the terms to include only convertible preferred shares and no common stock, the source said.
Morgan Stanley is the latest stricken U.S. financial institution to seek refuge in a deal with a larger bank as the worsening credit crisis and accompanying market meltdown has narrowed the options of once stable banks and brokerages.
The Morgan Stanley news comes as Spain’s Banco Santander SA was in advanced talks to buy full control of Sovereign Bancorp Inc in a deal valued at $2.5 billion, according to another source familiar with the matter.
Bloomberg – The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, seeking to jumpstart a hunt for suspected manipulation of financial stocks, will require hedge fund managers, brokerages and institutional investors to describe under oath their bets on the firms.
Investors with “significant” trades in the companies’ securities or credit default swaps must disclose their positions and provide “certain other information” in written statements, the regulator said yesterday. SEC spokesman John Nester declined to say who would receive the requests.
The SEC issued a series of emergency measures, rules and warnings to hedge funds this past week as lawmakers including Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd and executives such as Morgan Stanley Chief Executive Officer John Mack said traders may be spreading misinformation and using abusive tactics to attack companies. On Sept. 17, the agency said it may also force funds to hand over their communications.
CNNMoney.com – Wall Street equity traders usually thrive on volatility, but the latest arrival of carnage on their doorstep has distracted and confounded them.
This habitually brusque bunch is even more harried than usual, worrying about their livelihoods and the safety of their funds’ accounts in addition to the direction of a crazy market. One prominent form of escape: gallows humor.
Asked what floor he was going to in an office complex in Jersey City, N.J., an employee of one major brokerage replied, "I might as well go up to your floor, and apply for a job. It looks like we’re next."
Even the diehard speculators in the hedge-fund community are in a state of confusion. The funds have watched two of the prime brokerages that serve them collapse and another get swallowed by a bank in a few months, and some are close to sticking money under a mattress, said Lorenzo Di Mattia, manager of hedge fund Sibilla Global Fund. Some funds are too busy working out where to put their account to even bother with securities or commodities.
Globe and Mail – Once viewed as a safe haven, crude oil has lost its lustre as investors bet that the crisis in financial markets will hurt an already weakened global economy and drive down petroleum demand.
At the same time, speculators who piled into oil and other commodities on the way up have reversed course, as brokerages and hedge funds are being forced to liquidate those positions to buttress their balance sheets, traders said yesterday.
Lehman Brothers Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. are both major players in the crude oil markets, and both companies are expected to unwind their positions after Lehman sought bankruptcy protection and Merrill agreed to be acquired by Bank of America.
Crude prices fell sharply yesterday on futures markets in London and New York after hurricane Ike blew through the Gulf of Mexico without doing major damage to U.S. oil production there.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – Avalon Capital Holdings Corporation, and its wholly owned subsidiary, Traders Development LLC, announced that it has initiated alpha testing of its proprietary ECN system.
The Avalon ECN is a liquidity aggregator, which takes the best prices from an unlimited number of price providers, and allows traders to execute off the best prices in the market. The system will be ideal for traders seeking to execute large orders of a billion or more across many banks and hedge funds simultaneously.
"The overall goal of the Avalon ECN is to significantly improve the institutional liquidity in the Forex Market by applying the latest software technologies in the Foreign Exchange Industry." Dr. Vladimir Karpenkov, Chairman of Avalon Capital Holdings Corporation said. "Additionally, the Avalon ECN is designed to reduce the cost for Retail Forex brokerages that are seeking interbank liquidity."
"The Forex Market is about reducing overhead, managing risk and acquiring new trading clients. With Avalon technology, companies ought to increase their profitability while reducing risk." Alex De Khtyar, President of Avalon Capital Holdings Corporations added.
CNN Money – No one would dare go so far as to say that the Wall Street job market is bright.
Through June, financial firms of all stripes have shed an estimated 63,000 jobs over the past year, according to the latest employment figures from the Labor Department. That’s due in large part to the housing slump and credit crisis.
The pain is particularly acute on Wall Street. Investment banks and brokerages have shed an estimated 7,600 jobs, or roughly 4% of their workforce during the past year, according to the latest figures from the New York State Department of Labor.
If previous market downturns are any guide, analysts project that Wall Street could cut anywhere between 20% to 25% of its workers if the economy gets even worse.
But despite this, there are some financial firms hanging out the "Help Wanted" sign.
