Hedge Crunch FinancialBridgewater Fund Down in First Half of 2017
Being the largest is not a guarantee that your funds will always rise, seems to be the lesson from the less than stellar performance of Bridgewater Associates’ Pure Alpha II Fund. Pure Alpha dropped by 2.5% during the first half of 2017, disappointing managers and investors alike.
The Pure Alpha Fund’s drop can be compared to the gain of 3.7 percent for the HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index. This index fund tracks the greater hedge fund industry at large.
Looking at the bigger picture, which is anyway more relevant for pension funds, the 12-month period ending in June 2017 saw a net gain of 13.3 percent. Pension funds typically operate on a fiscal year which starts on July 1.
Bridgewater is the largest hedge fund in the world, and is a good indicator of how the industry is doing in general. Pure Alpha II is managed by Ray Dalio, the founder and head of Bridgewater. Alon with Dalio, Robert Prince and Greg Jensen hold the title of co-chief investment officer.
Superstar Hedge Managers Facing Hemorrhaging Funds
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital lost $400 million from its investor base in response to a depressing 2 percent loss during the first half of 2017.
The return of $400 million represents 15 percent of all those who are able to withdraw their stakes in Greenlight, according to Einhorn’s rules for the fund. According to the WSJ Greenlight now has about $7 billion in AUM. The strict rules governing Greenlight allows only half of the fund’s investors to withdraw smack in the middle of the year. When the maximum withdrawals are reached, the rest of the investors must wait until the end of the year rolls around before they too can withdraw their money.
If misery loves company, then Einhorn has some other stars to moan about the state of hedge funds in recent months. John Paulson, according to reports from the New York Times earlier this year, is left with about $10 billion in AUM, down from a high of $36 billion back in 2011. Eric Mindich, who manages Eton Park, said his fund was closing down as his AUM shriveled by $2 billion in 2016.
Investors are cashing in their chips as hedge funds showed lackluster performance during the eight-year-long bull market. Hedge funds averaged 3.7 percent returns for the first half of 2017. Greenlight’s worst year in its history was 2015, posting losses in the double digits. Despite telling his investors that he “failed miserably,” he still did not honor requests to lower his relatively high fees. Greenlight gets a performance fee even when the fund does not “perform.”
The New Wolves of Wall Street: Cooperating AI Entities
According to Adam Smith, something called the “invisible hand” controlled the ebbs and flows of the free market. This so-called hand was the way Smith referred to the power which pushed the market towards equilibrium as huge numbers of self-interested individuals interacted with that free market.
This concept is about to take on a new type of “invisible hand.” San Francisco-based hedge fund, Numerai, is introducing a virtual currency which will be manipulated by artificial intelligence programs designed to cooperate, rather than compete, the traditional model Adam Smith based his theories upon.
Founded by South African technologist and a Cornell math major, Richard Craib, Numerai is an “open-source” hedge fund which has the potential to completely alter the singularly Darwinian approach to investing that has always characterized investing.
The currency is called Numeraire, and is a cryptographic token which will incentivize the modelling of the Artificial Intelligence that now guides the hedge fund’s trades.
The Numeraire smart contract was launched to Ethereum. Over 1.2 million tokens were deployed to a distributed network of 19,000 data scientists all over the globe. Numerai has already been trading for more than a year successfully, and now the company wants to tweak its methods. The company is hoping to come closer to the final goal of creating a completely decentralized, software-led hedge fund.
CEO Craib would like to see the Numeraire bring the open source philosophy to finance, similar to what the powerful effects networks have exhibited in such platforms as Facebook and Uber.
“Finance is totally competitive right now,” Craib said. “There’s no reason why you’d want to help your friend with a hedge fund if you have a hedge fund. But if you both held the same cryptocurrency, and it went up in value together, maybe there would be more collaboration.”
Castle Harlan Portfolio Company Acquires School Meal Supplier in Southern California
Compliance company Gold Star Foods acquired A&R Wholesale Distributors, in what is the third buyout deal made by Gold Star since it came under the ownership of Castle Harlan, Inc, a New York private equity company.
Gold Star Foods helps local school districts all over the USA adhere to the many state and federal rules and regulations related to government funding for school meal programs. They also insure compliance with the many regulations that govern nutritional content of school meals. A&R is a supplier of foods to schools in Southern California, and has been for over 30 years.
Castle Harlan Senior Managing Director David B Pittaway expressed his thoughts about the deal:
“Like Gold Star, A&R is experienced in dealing with the complexities of the USDA Child Nutrition Program and helps to create meals that adhere to USDA nutritional standards and commodity guidelines. The combination of Gold Star and A&R will allow customers to benefit from access to new product categories, an increased number of SKUs, and higher service levels.”
The monetary value of the deal was not released to the public. Jeff Kuriel will continue to lead A&R from its plant in Anaheim, California. Eventually the headquarters will move to Gold Star’s location in Ontario, also in Southern California. When the move is complete Mr. Kuriel will join the Gold Star executive leadership group.
During the first quarter of 2017 Castle Harlan invested over $40 million in Gold Star Foods, bringing the total of their investment to over $60 million during the past year. Part of Castle Harlan’s investment was used to purchase Colyar Technology Solutions. Colyar is a designer, developer and marketer of food distribution and compliance management software. A new distribution center was built in Dixon, California, to support the expansion of Gold Star into the Northern California market.
“The acquisition of Colyar furthered Gold Star’s strategic shift into providing technology-enabled national school nutrition solutions to both states and local school districts,” said Patrick Zyla, Vice President of Castle Harlan. “Colyar’s web-based tools help to simplify the complex regulatory burdens faced by food providers in lunchrooms across the nation. Colyar assists in managing federal dollars by providing a platform to manage the application and administration of claims to the USDA, providing a link among local school districts, states and the USDA.”
Tarrant Sees AI as the Third Wave of Fund Management
Jeffrey Tarrant, CEO and chief investment officer of Protégé Partners LLC, believes that future hedge fund managers will need to be able to be proficient in machine learning processes. He envisions a future in which funds using such machine learning will outperform and grow more quickly than funds using traditional strategies for investing.
“Artificial intelligence will fundamentally change investment management,” declared Mr. Tarrant.
Protégé manages $800 million in emerging hedge fund seeding strategies. In November, 2016 Tarrant started MOV37 LLC to invest in small, emerging hedge funds, but using autonomous learning investment strategies. He is also CEO and CIO of the infant company.
“This is the third wave of investment management. It’s populated by guys aged 25 to 38 who possess totally different skill sets” than those used by the first wave of discretionary managers and the second wave of quantitative managers, he said.
Managers of the future, which is already here, will need to know automation and be able to analyze huge amounts of data streams. He also said that the people with these skills today are “the guys whose parents yelled at them for spending too much time in the basement playing electronic games. They are wired differently and don’t give a (hoot) about the old models.”
What has really made the difference in terms of the present and future success of these new-fangled fund managers, who Tarrant likes to refer to as the “third-wave” of fund managers, is that “artificial intelligence is finally working,” Tarrant added.
Tarrant gave the following example of how far AI has come: It took a computer 38 years to become the world’s best checkers player in 1994; It took 12 years for a computer to beat the world chess champion in 1997; but it only took six years for a computer to finally beat Ke Jie, the world’s best Go player.
May Looks Good for Hedge Fund Managers
As spring arrives not just flowers are blooming. Several hedge fund managers announced that their bets have finally beat the gains of the stock market in general, after a dark winter of slow growth.
Daniel Loeb, chief of Third Point, a $16 billion manager, told his investors that his Third Point Partners LP fund rose 2.1% in May, and the more aggressive Third Point Ultra posted a 3.5% gain.
William Ackman had similar news for his investors. Pershing Square Capital Management, an $11 billion fund, added 2.4% to its bottom line in May.
Both managers were able to beat the average for the hedge fund industry in the month of May of a 0.24% gain, while the S & P 500 stock market index had a 1.4% increase.
The past five months of 2017 was good to Loeb and his funds. Third Point Partners had a gain of 9.9% while the Ultra fund climbed 16.1% in the same time period. Ackman’s Pershing Square is up 4.3% since the year began, recovering from two straight years of shrinking.
Investments and Growth: The Silverfern Group
International multi-asset class investment management firm, the Silverfern Group recently announced some of its noteworthy investments and growth patterns.
Co-Managing Partner and CIO, Clive Holmes, together with co-Managing Partner Reeta Holmes, recently attended the firm’s 2017 Annual Meeting in New York City. There, both partners spoke of the recent investments made in the company.
According to Clive Holmes:
“Silverfern’s two large, global networks – our base of investors spanning five continents and 23 countries, and our network of more than 50 operating executives and local operating partners –again provided us with a flow of private, off-market information that created unique investment opportunities last year. We continue to add global diversification to our portfolio, while at all times remaining an informed, local investor.”
This sentiment was echoed by Reeta Holmes who said:
“2016 proved to be extremely productive for Silverfern as we made five new platform investments, three follow-on investments, and achieved three investment exits globally. The pace of our investments in middle market private equity, real estate and private debt globally has been accelerating, and we expect it will continue in 2017.”
This is in addition to the company’s acquisition earlier this year of SAI Global (together with Baring Private Equity Asia) as well as its Broad River Power Holdings (in conjunction with Arroyo Energy Investors).
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Tips from One of the Most Successful Hedge Funds
In a private First Quarter investor newsletter published by Elliot Management, five bits of advice are outlined. Billionaire Paul Singer founded the fund, which is now valued at about $33 billion.
The statement says:
“Some of these lessons needed to be actually experienced to be incorporated at a deep level in the decision making of a team, whereas others could be gleaned secondhand,” said the statement.
The following are bits of excellent advice.
• No stock price is either too high or too low in order for it to go either higher of lower.
• Market turns cannot be timed.
• Large changes in market prices often happen way in advance of when the reasons for the changes become clear. By then it is already too late to incorporate the new information into one’s trading at the old prices.
• It is extremely important to avoid significant losses. Why? To avoid a painful, or even terminal affect bad adversity has on the quality of a money manager’s decision-making abilities.
• In order for money managers to succeed in the long term they must be able to have a wide and deep understanding about the world at large, and not just capital structures. They should know corporate business strategies and industry dynamics, which is absolutely vital to any future to the long-term success of money managers.
Top Revenues for Hedge Fund Managers
Despite the fact that investor returns for hedge funds were somewhat “disappointing,” hedge fund managers did not feel the pinch. Indeed, over the last ten years the industry has encountered very bad returns with Daniel S. Loeb referring to it a “catastrophic period.”
Bringing home a staggering $11 billion, the top 25 hedge fund managers around the world. between just two top earners (Renaissance Technologies founder James Simons and Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio) a net of $3 billion was taken home.
How do they do it though exactly? How are they bringing in these kind of bucks? Simons himself recently pointed out that “Good performance, mediocre results or even downright ugly returns. When it comes to hedge funds, it scarcely matters.” So what is it that is making them so successful? Later on in the article, Simons provides the answer. He says:
“The key to these large paydays is the fee system known as 2-and-20. Hedge funds typically charge investors 2 percent of their investment annually, regardless of performance. So even in a disappointing year, managers still are paid a handsome sum. In the event they make a profit, the funds take 20 percent of that as well.”
The list – composed by Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine – is generated on an evaluation of the percentage of hedge fund manager’s fund and performance fees, with a study of how they personally invested in the fund. When the list was first formulated back in 2000, compensation was half of what it is now.