The hedge fund arena is currently undergoing a tremendous amount of change. As the size of the industry has shrunk over the past year, numerous funds have been forced out of business. Meanwhile, investors have become much more discerning with their capital when compared to the boom years of earlier this decade. Lastly, increased scrutiny from Washington and beyond threatens […]
David Einhorn is not afraid to call a bluff when he sees it. The President of Greenlight Capital has built a reputation within hedge fund circles as a fiercely independent, critical-thinking manager with a knack for making bearish bets on established, generally well-respected companies. No stranger to the public eye, previously publicized campaigns against the likes of Allied Capital and […]
Early last week, real estate circles were sent abuzz by the release of the Standard and Poor’s/Case Schiller national home price index, which revealed that average home prices in the nation’s 20 largest markets experienced a 3% jump in valuations during the second quarter. It marked the first quarterly increase in 3 years for the index, leading some prognosticators to […]
While the debate rages on as to whether the economy is, indeed, displaying evidence of “green shoots,” numerous hedge fund firms appear to be taking matters into their own hands, repositioning themselves to benefit from any signs of improving investor sentiment. In particular, several firms have gone on recent hiring sprees in an attempt to lock in the best and […]
Despite a series of ongoing challenges, a variety of environmental effects have recently swung in the activists’ favor. First, as mentioned in my previous blog post, stock prices have taken a tremendous hit over the past year. Yet while the news media tend to tout the market’s recent resurgence, in reality the S&P 500 still remains more than 25% below […]
Bill Ackman, the forty-three-year-old founder of hedge fund firm, Pershing Square Capital Management, has had a rough go of late. Readers may recall that in 2007 he raised $2 billion from private investors in order to start a new hedge fund, Pershing Square IV. Employing a highly-leveraged mix of common stock and call options, Ackman invested the proceeds in […]
If the actions of some of the hedge fund industry’s leading managers is any indication, the attractiveness of gold as an asset class is on the rise. Several recent disclosures support such a conclusion. First, a recent survey performed by London-based researcher, Moonraker, found that 20 out of 22 hedge funds had added exposure to gold bullion to their portfolios. […]
