You’d think it would be hard to find much humorous in the kind of year hedge funds have had – down 8.5% for the year in their second worst performance in history. But there can be, depending on your perspective. When I summarize my book, The Hedge Fund Mirage with the simple explanation that all the money ever […]
Euroland euphoria has broken out – so say Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and Louise Armitstead of the Daily Telegraph. Mario Draghi rode to the rescue with Long Term Repo Operations (LTRO), and it’s now reported that Eurozone banks borrowed 489 billion Euros from the ECB for three years. If they are so moved they can engage in the carry trade, […]
Barron’s has a couple of interesting articles this weekend. They lead with “Buckle Up”, and make the case for equities by highlighting the very wide equity risk premium (the S&P500 earnings yield of 8% minus the yield on ten-year treasuries of 2%) something we’ve also noted in the past. This spread is historically wide and, […]
My book, The Hedge Fund Mirage, is finally in print and making its way up the Amazon Best Sellers list (currently in the top 3%). The hedge fund industry has co-operated in its launch by delivering the second worst year in history. Not all hedge funds are bad though, and since some of the most […]
The New York Times today has a piece on Richard Kinder, founder of Kinder Morgan (KMP) the largest publicly traded partnership in the U.S. KMP recently agreed to acquire El Paso Corporation to create an entity controlling 80,000 miles of pipeline crisscrossing the U.S. KMP is a Master Limited Partnership (MLP), which is to say that owners of LP […]
As the reality sets in of guiding 26 countries (i.e. the EU less Britain) towards agreement on a common set of revisions to the Treaty, the smug satisfaction of the tabloid press and at least a substantial minority of the British population is almost palpable even here on the U.S. side of the Atlantic. One by […]
I spent a few days in London last week, meeting with investors and discussing my book. I also managed three separate TV appearances. I can tell you that if the € sovereign debt crisis appears to dominate the news in the U.S., it is an all-consuming obsession for the financial media in the UK. It […]
I spent a most enjoyable lunchtime at a roundtable sponsored by the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation (CSFI). The topic of debate was my book, and more specifically my assertions that hedge fund investors have not done very well. It was a spirited and informed debate, with lively interchange among the participants. Hopefully […]
I have arrived in London and am therefore physically closer to the Eurozone crisis than normal. Tomorrow I’ll be spending a lot of time promoting my book – Bloomberg at 7am, a roundtable debate at the Center for the Study of Financial Innovation over lunch and Jeff Randall on Sky in the evening. Hedge funds […]
Betting against a crisis is almost always the right approach. If you invest without leverage, you’re afforded the luxury of waiting to see how events play out without caring too much about the path equity prices take. It might very well be that the latest round of negotiations will result in the ultimately more stable […]
