Bloomberg – Hedge funds have invested a record $6.5 billion in U.S. petroleum refiners, expecting profit to jump as companies shut aging plants and acquire cheaper supplies of North American crude from burgeoning shale-oil wells.
Barry Rosenstein’s Jana Partners LLC and David Tepper’s Appaloosa Management LP alone have amassed $1.3 billion of stock, joining funds that together more than quintupled their money in the industry since the S&P 500 Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing Index’s eight-year low in the fourth quarter of 2008. The index soared 18 percent this year, beating the 5 percent gain in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.
