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hedge funds
 

Giving Back-- Holy Grail for Contacts in HF Industry

madmoney15's picture
(Orangutan, 325
 
Points)
 on 5/19/13 at 11:53pm
faith_hope_charity.jpg

Well, I've been down on my luck lately, I got turned down for a Fund of Funds Analyst role and I'm waiting to see if I can get into Santa Clara University for an MSF. I figured doing something good will turn things around. And up to this point, I've been exceptionally greedy in regards to my resources of contacts. I found the holy grail of contacts for HF's (California) a while ago. I've also experienced that the response rate is much higher as well.

http://www.calhedgefund.org/index.html

All you have to do is sign up and get to the membership directory. Enjoy.

Market Blogs?

leveragedoasis's picture
IB
(Baboon, 101
 
Points)
 on 5/10/13 at 12:53pm

Does anybody have any recommendations on good blogs that commentate on market events / companies much like WhiteHat's blog (http://huntingforcommoncents.wordpress.com/)?

Personal Account for HFs

Eli20's picture
O
(Monkey, 32
 
Points)
 on 5/7/13 at 1:29am

I have never traded on a personal account, although I dabbled with options and stocks on a simulator for a while. I'm starting FT IB work at a BB this summer and I might be interested in working at a hedge fund instead of PE.

I don't really have any cash to throw around in the debt/equity markets, although I could always invest in a simulator.

How important is personal trading when doing HF recruitment? What about for credit/distressed debt/special sit HFs? Would those be more forgiving than a long/short fund of people who didn't have personal investing experience?

If it is very important, how can I get started with it in the month or so that I have before I start work, or is it too late? Do a lot of people lie about personal trading experience?

Private Equity Associate to Hedge Fund Transition

lurker22's picture
IB
(Monkey, 45
 
Points)
 on 5/5/13 at 9:57pm

Anybody made the transition? How were you able to gain the public markets experience needed for recruiting? And how did you get around the stigma from hopping into PE after banking (instead of HF)?

Any comments would be appreciated. Thanks!

Start up Hedge Funds

Jacol123's picture
(Chimp, 4
 
Points)
 on 4/30/13 at 2:38pm

Does anyone know of any start up hedge funds that are hiring?

Which are the most creative hedge funds?

dazedmonk's picture
IB
 
Points)
 on 4/22/13 at 9:49pm

Been thinking about the future (and present) of the hedge fund industry lately. Many of the tools of the trade are so well-known that it is increasingly difficult to outperform. To that end, I have two questions:

1) What are the most creative/entrepreneurial funds you know of? I mean creative in terms of strategy (e.g. Coleman's drift into pre-IPO P/E , Ackman's turnarounds) or research process (e.g. Einhorn's sleuthing). I'm less interested in baller quants(e.g. Renaissance) unless you can actually explain what they do.

2) What can a typical fundamental L/S shop do to gain an edge (e.g. Analyze faster? Only invest into market dislocations? )?

3) What do you think of the state of the industry? In particular, are L/S equity managers basically turning into L/S mutual funds?

How much does your decisions from the ages of 12 - 18 determine your future/overall happiness in life?

hopingtobreakin's picture
HF
(Baboon, 111
 
Points)
 on 4/17/13 at 1:35pm

Gotta make this quick - at work.

After reading the risible, lambaste worthy & somberful post of "biggest life regrets"

http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/the-single-b...

It's evident for MOST of the posters on this forum (whom I'm guessing are <25, 21?) loathe their college decisions, root cause being their high school decisions thus by transitive property loathe high school decisions.

Seems like many people would like a do-over in life because their models & bottles dreams never materialized (or never will). Honestly, thought the posts were hysterical. It seems like it’s too bad that many of you weren’t conceived in Amy Chua’s womb.

Tepper Tops Highest-Paid Hedgie List

Edmundo Braverman's picture
ST
(Human, 14,373
 
Points)
 on 4/15/13 at 8:00am
tepper.jpg

Some of these numbers are just staggering. I remember when the whole world came unglued after Michael Milken paid himself $550 million in 1987. That wouldn't even cover David Tepper's tax bill on his 2012 earnings. That's right, kids: hedge fund managers are now into the 10-figures for all-in comp.

Tepper led the pack with an astounding $2.2 BILLION compensation package in 2012, but at least he made his clients some big money. Nipping at his heels was Ray Dalio at $1.7 BILLION and Stevie Cohen at $1.4 BILLION, and they didn't even beat the S&P.

“The managers who did well last year were those who focused on fundamental primary equity research,” said Carter Furr, a portfolio manager at Signature, an independent family office in Norfolk, Va., with $2.8 billion in assets.

“The guys who were paying attention to the macro picture, got caught up in the headlines and fear-mongering, lost sight of the fact we were having a stealth recovery in the United States,” he said.

Tweets Coming to a Bloomberg Terminal Near You

TheKing's picture
O
 
Points)
 on 4/11/13 at 12:30pm
Twitter on Bloomberg

Last Thursday, Bloomberg announced that it has begun integrating Twitter functionality into its service platform. It filters company and market-centric tweets for its base of over 300,000 subscribers. This came shortly after the SEC provided guidance that would allow for companies to distribute their announcements and press releases through social media websites.

Bloomberg's service is heavily filtered and entirely focused on providing high quality, potentially market moving news to its users. Traditionally, banks and trading houses have restricted use of Twitter at the office for compliance reasons, so this service offers traders and Analysts a means of keeping up with twittersphere without resorting to their phones and without worrying the firm's legal staff.

I think that this goes a long way to confirm what we already know, that Twitter and other social media can move markets. I was curious to get an insider's view of just how important social media is in the trading world, so I reached out to a trader friend of mine for his view. Read on to hear what he had to say...

Pitches becoming "priced-in" before interview

PuppyBackedSecurities's picture
IB
(Orangutan, 287
 
Points)
 on 3/21/13 at 7:43pm

I am current IB analyst interviewing with equity l/s value and special situations funds. I have had a few interviews but have held off reaching out to too many firms as I am still working on finalizing my pitches.

Private Equity vs Hedge Funds: 4 Key Differences

alpha mail's picture
IB
(Baboon, 168
 
Points)
 on 4/10/13 at 4:30pm
PE VS HF.png

Mod note: This comment was originally posted in
HF vs. PE for Pre-MBA Associate and we wanted to share this great post on the differences between the two routes to those who missed it. Click here to see more top rated comments.

Full disclosure, I'm biased to the HF path, but have friends at top PE shops. First things first, PE and HF are two fundamentally different career paths. Yes, they're both buyside gigs and both pay extremely well. However, it's the differences you'll have to pay attention to.

1. I would say HF is less modeling intensive than PE just BC at the top PE funds you're only going to be modeling as a pre-MBA associate, whereas at a top HF (fundamental value / long-short equity) you'll be doing some modeling to support an investment thesis but you'll also be screening for ideas, crafting the thesis, and defending it with valuation models, et al. Obviously this a blanket statement and realistically the real answer is that it depends on the shop.

At the top non-sourcing PE shops, dealflow is going to be driven primarily by bankers and the rolodex of your operating advisors and senior professionals. This means that as an associate you're going to primarily do LBO modeling with little work on the sourcing side and little work on the post-acquisition operations side. This is great because it'll make you extremely comfortable with modeling down to a very granular level and it'll help you understand swappable cap structures and HY debt. As mentioned in some other threads, megafund PE is very much banking 2.0.

Pick any two metrics

ERWB's picture
(Monkey, 59
 
Points)
 on 3/14/13 at 9:27am

I had an interview the other day and was asked "if you had a list of companies to choose from, without knowing anything about them, and only having financial statements available (and ratios), what are the two metrics you would use to pick a company for an investment"..What would you say?

BloombergSen Investment Partners

nyhedgefunder's picture
HF
 
Points)
 on 3/11/13 at 11:31pm

Anyone know anything about this Toronto based firm?

Hedge Fund Partnerships

Hooked on LEAPS's picture
ER
 
Points)
 on 3/11/13 at 8:08pm

Most of the time when I hear about hedge fund founders, I only hear one name, with the exception of Charlie Munger and Jim Rogers. I'm curious to know how often HF's have multiple founders?

The goal of chipping in $2-3 million with 4 other pissed off MD's certainly feels more attainable than raising the $10+ million by myself, that I often hear is necessary to realistically have a shot at this thing.

Sent via Galaxy S Sucks.

Small Cap Value Investors

Hooked on LEAPS's picture
ER
 
Points)
 on 2/22/13 at 11:21am

Anyone know of any good small cap value investors to follow? Mohnish Pabrai, the guy I used to follow, seems to have shifted to mostly large and mid cap stocks.

My qualifications:
-Primarily invests in companies with a market cap of less than $1 billion.
-Annualized returns of 20%+ over the last 5 years (preferably more).
- A history of holding onto stocks for more than one year, otherwise the 13-F is horseshit information by the time we see it.

I've got a few SB's left to give out.

Hedge Fund Ratio - (AUM to Investment Team)

theworks9's picture
(Baboon, 163
 
Points)
 on 2/5/13 at 10:32pm

Anyone have this list that they can post? It is in an article published by HFAlert.

"Equity Shops Run Gamut From Lean to Robust"

http://www.hfalert.com/headlines.php?hid=160186

Black River Asset Management and Cargill funds

peinvestor2012's picture
IB
(King Kong, 1,693
 
Points)
 on 2/5/13 at 5:42pm

What type of reputation do these groups hold on a national level?

Obviously they are large and well-known locally and throughout the MW, but what about in NYC, Boston, Greenwich, San Fran, LA?

Curious to hear.

How to Value a Hedge Fund?

Hooked on LEAPS's picture
ER
 
Points)
 on 1/19/13 at 8:03pm

http://www.mergernetwork.com/buy-businesses-for-sa...

$150 million kind of sounds like a steal for $3 billion in AUM, if we're playing by the 2/20 rule. At that valuation, it appears that anyone who buys a hedge fund and achieves annualized returns of ~10% will be filthy rich.

Am I missing something here? The only thing I can think of is people withdrawing money from the fund once they find out the previous fund manager is leaving, but I don't think that alone would justify such a steep discount.

Hedge funds vs. Mutual funds

SirTradesaLot's picture
 
Points)
 on 1/12/13 at 8:00am
hedge fund vs mutual fund.jpg

Many people here on WSO are obsessed with hedge funds and look upon the mutual fund industry with disdain.  However, I have seen a lot of misinformation out there on what mutual funds even do, so I wanted to layout the basics of both hedge funds and mutual funds and what makes them similar and what makes them different.  Also, I want to layout what some of the incentives are for some of the managers of these funds and how those incentives either align or don't with the investors.  I'm not a lawyer, so don't take this as legal advice.  This is just a general outline.

More Money Than God

Newspeak's picture
IB
(Orangutan, 341
 
Points)
 on 1/3/13 at 1:30am

Anyone read this? It covers the history of hedge funds and the stories behind some of the big names. Fantastic book; just finishing it now.

MF PE to Hedge Funds

Newspeak's picture
IB
(Orangutan, 341
 
Points)
 on 12/22/12 at 12:19pm

In the 10xleverage MS/KKR thread, it was said that a lot of pre-MBA associates at places like KKR/BX are trying to move into hedge funds after their two years.

Why is this? Is PE not the holy grail in the minds of the top performers?

Also, which hedge funds and what types of hedge funds are these people trying to get into? Which HFs require PE experience?

Waging a moral war on Herbalife

Unforseen's picture
(King Kong, 1,099
 
Points)
 on 12/21/12 at 11:00am
HLF 2012 YTD

Considering most of my clients are out in their beach and country homes vacationing leading to a very slow day at work, I figure I write about one of my favorite market developments of the year, The Hedge Funds vs. Herbalife war.

EDIT: Guys I think its important to get this site to the top of the google search when you search for 'Herbalife': http://factsaboutherbalife.com/


Herbalife LTD. is a network marketing company that sells weight management, nutritional supplement, and personal care products. The Company sells its products globally through a network of independent distributors. Herbalife also sells literature and promotional materials.

Man I love this story. As some of you know, Einhorn started the war on MLM in May of this year, when he nonchalantly asked a couple of questions on HLFs earning call which led to one of the most awesomes live drops in a stock price I've seen. (You can hear and read WSO comments about the call here.

Sending cold call letters and CV to hedge funds

njokes's picture
O
(Monkey, 56
 
Points)
 on 12/10/12 at 5:45pm

Hi,

With the holidays coming up and with nothing to do currently, I am considering sending a blanket letter and CV to several hedge funds to see if they need an intern over the holiday period.

Unfortunately I don't have any contacts in the HF industry, but have a summer internship at a BB lined up and would like to get some experience.

I know it is a really small chance to get some work from this, but is it worth my effort.

Anyone had any success through stuff like this?

Thanks for any input.

Growth Equity -> HF Post MBA - How to frame story?

CharmWithSubstance's picture
VC
 
Points)
 on 12/8/12 at 6:08am

In process of recruiting for HFs for post-MBA analyst position. Everyone says it's best to show that you've had a passion for investing since a young age. I'm more of the type where I love studying companies, extracting information, forming an opinion based on discussions, and having an obsession for tracking progress/being right. That said, I do not have a PA (at least not a well thought out one - invested in a few one off stocks here and there but no real story behind that) and didn't think about hedge funds until after my MBA. I did growth equity before and the main motivation for me to go into HFs is for the reasons mentioned above and that I can spend the majority of time doing that (vs. process/bureaucracy in PE/growth funds). The question is - how do I frame my story?

Why We Should Legalize Insider Trading

GMngmt's picture
O
 
Points)
 on 12/2/12 at 6:37am
A Shadowy Dealing

James McDermott. Jeffrey Skilling. Martha Stewart. Raj Rajaratnam. Samuel Waksal. They’ve all been indicted for the financial taboo of trading on private information profitably. Recently, Steven Cohen’s $14B HF SAC Capital Advisors is the latest whipping boy and highest profile member to potentially be added to CNBC’s exclusive list of Famous Insider Trading Cases. However, financial history reveals that before the 1960’s such practices were the norm. Fast forward to 2012 and the reality of its enforcement according to Henry G. Manne, Dean Emeritus at George Mason University is that it’s, "…arbitrary, capricious, political and extremely inefficient." Read on to see where I take bIatoise’s post, Why Is Insider Trading Illegal?

LSE Alternative Investments Conference 2013 (LSEAIC)

mjehnke's picture
(Chimp, 2
 
Points)
 on 11/29/12 at 11:57am

Dear WSO friends,

Want a job in Private Equity or Hedge Funds, meet the industry's leading managers and network with an extremely select group of the world's brightest students ?

Apply now to the London School of Economics SU Alternative Investments Conference 2013 before the 4th of Decemeber 2012 on lseaic. c o m. So what’s the LSE SU Alternative Investments Conference? The LSE SU Alternative Investments Conference is the world's largest student-run conference on hedge funds and private equity, bringing together over 50 speakers and 350 delegates from across the world. We are delighted to confirm an incredible line-up of speakers this year :

- Jim O’Neill, Chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management
- Stephen Pagluica, Managing Partner at Bain Capital

How to choose between exit opps?

Newspeak's picture
IB
(Orangutan, 341
 
Points)
 on 11/24/12 at 9:28pm

I'm starting to try to narrow down what types of exits I want to focus on with head hunters next year.

Assuming one is in an M&A, Lev Fin, Sponsors, top Industry group, how would you guys rank the following exits from banking in terms of:
a) selectivity/difficulty of entry
b) desirability among analysts
c) foundation for long term career
d) compensation
e) whatever other criteria analysts value

Megafund PE
Middle-Market PE
Distressed Debt Hedge Funds
Merger Arbitrage/Event Driven Hedge Funds
Macro Hedge Funds
Megafund Credit Fund (like THL Credit, KKR Credit, etc)
Early Stage Venture Capital
Late Stage Venture Capital
Other?

MBA or CFA to move into hedge funds?

viks0004's picture
O
 
Points)
 on 11/12/12 at 8:35pm

Hi,

I am a newbie on WSO. I am currently in derivatives pricing/risk (almost 4 years). I have done my MS in Quantitative Finance. However, I am a semi-quant and not a hardcore quant PhD. I have good understanding of markets and use of derivatives, risks, pricing models. I work in financial services firm in NYC (not a bank). My ultimate goal is to move to Asset management/ investment management. I have not been able to find leads into pricing roles on buyside yet. My question: is CFA enough to move to eventually move to portfolio management? Or should I be targeting MBA from top 10 bschools? Again the same ROI of MBA question. I did my research on WSO but could not find convincing answer. Any replies would be much appreciated.

Thanks!!

Getting a job in PE, PWM, IB, derivatives, Hedge funds etc...

romee's picture
(Chimp, 13
 
Points)
 on 11/9/12 at 3:37pm

Hello all,

I am new to this site and quite impressed with the wealth of information.

Would my MS Accounting open doors in PE, Derivatives sales, PWM etc analyst/associate position...?

Since my university isn't a target school for Wall Street, I am looking at firms in FL, TX, and GA.

I am 25 and will be graduating with my a MS Accounting in summer 2013, and my current GPA is 3.7 / 4.0. I initially wanted to work in Accounting (CPA), but realized I would bore myself to death.

my education credentials:

_I hold a B.S in Management from the University of South Florida 3.0/4 GPA (young and stupid partying)
_Certificate in Financial Management from Cornell University
_Certificate in Management Consulting from Geogia State University

Thanks!

Top Hedge Funds Performers in 2012

Financier4Hire's picture
PE
(King Kong, 1,110
 
Points)
 on 10/29/12 at 11:00pm
Hedgie

I looked over this Insider Monkey blog long/short equity hedge fund list and what struck me is how many have shot up to the top in the last year; also, the average holdings is on the small side : 20 stocks or less.

As noted, Ms. Krishnamsetty's analysis does not have access to the funds short positions. Her calculations are based on their long stock positions revealed in their 13F filings once a quarter and that’s with a 45-day delay.

1. Fortress Investment Group LLC (NYSE:FIG)

2. Sprott Asset Management

3. DAFNA Capital Management

4. Artis Capital Management

5. Palo Alto Investors