Which Hedge Fund Has Won Big in Last Three Months?

Posted by: Jane on November 23, 2008 3:38 pm | In General thoughts | No Comments |

When I was browsing the institutional investor holding report at iifacts.com, I was pretty much shocked when I saw the Q3 2008 13F filing of SOLUS ALTERNATIVE ASSET MANAGEMENT LP. They bought put options of almost all the major financial companies, including C, WFC, GS, HSBC, COF, and JPM. They also bought tons of put option for QQQQ and GM. This fund will soon be in the news! Just imagine how much money they have made from these puts.

I googled this fund and this is what I got 

Stanfield to spin off hedge fund operations

NEW YORK — Stanfield Capital Partners will spin off its hedge fund operations into Solus Alternative Asset Management. Terms of the deal, expected to close by June 30, were not disclosed, said Jamie Tully, a Stanfield spokesman. Christopher Pucillo, partner and head of Stanfield’s hedge fund strategies, will be Solus’ CEO. Mr. Tully said Solus will continue to manage Stanfield’s hedge funds; he would not disclose the size of those investments. Stanfield managed a total of $11.2 billion as of Dec. 31, according to the firm’s latest SEC filing. Mr. Tully said the hedge fund operations were being separated from Stanfield so the firm can focus on its collateralized loan obligation investment strategies.

Given the huge profit they made in last three months, I am pretty sure this fund will become the "Paulson & Co." of year 2008!

Moore Capital’s Louis Bacon Bought Back Emerging Market ETF

Posted by: Jane on November 20, 2008 2:26 am | In General thoughts | No Comments |

Moore Capital's Louis Bacon sold all his 2,512,500 shares of EEM holdings in Q2, 2008, but bought back 270,000 shares of EEM back in Q3, 2008. Also, he bought new positions in 387,075 shares of Goldman Sachs (oops), and loaded up 2,330,000 of homebuilder ETF (XHB) and 20,000 Call option contracts on Sandisk (SNDK). Certainly, all of these holdings are now deep under the water. See his Q3 holdings at http://www.iifacts.com/MOORE-CAPITAL-MANAGEMENT-LLC-Q3-2008.html

Warren Buffet Bought $6 Billion ConocoPhillips Stocks

Posted by: Jane on November 19, 2008 4:38 am | In General thoughts | No Comments |

He bought the gigantic positions in Q2 and Q3 of 2008. Also, in Q3, he cut half of his holdings of Bank of America, and added 6.27% more of US Bank and 54% more of NRG to his holdings. He cut his positions in home improvement stores HomeDepot and Lowes. It seems that he got fed up with the housing market, too!

He added a new position ($164 million) in EATON CORP (ETN) but totally sold Wellpoint out.

See details of his holdings at http://www.iifacts.com. Direct link here.

A cool site for hedge fund/mutual fund/institutional investors holdings

Posted by: Jane on November 18, 2008 4:16 am | In General thoughts | No Comments |

It's called iifacts.com. It provides the most accurate, free information about institutional investor's stocks, bond and option holdings. Moreover, it's very user friendly by giving a detailed comparison on this quarter's filing with that of last quarter. A user can quickly figure out what the fund manager was buying and selling.

My Farewell!?

Posted by: Dr. Ge on October 29, 2006 9:05 pm | In General thoughts | 1 Comment |

I have been very quiet for a while - because first I don't have much to write and second I was very busy with work and personal stuff.

I was singing the bullish songs when the market hit blue in the summer. Now the bears went back to the caves and the bulls are dancing on the street – I wish those who kept reading my encouraging posts in the dark days had done well. Most of the stocks that I mentioned in my posts have gone up 20%-50%.

I sold my Intel long positions in both options and stocks before the earnings and enjoyed a very good profit. Especially, I sold the 2008 $20 leap call option that I bought in the $1.85-$2 range (I did let you know!) at a decent price of $3.8 with a 90% return. I also did well with Walmart calls that I bought when the stock sold at $43.

We can finally close the arguments of INTC/AMD that started on my blog back in February. We started with INTC at $20 and AMD at $40 and now both of them are at $20. Long INTC does make money if you bought call options at the bottom as I did, and short AMD certainly makes money and a lot! - AMD went down 50% since I called it a short.

I bought Yahoo stocks and call options at its recent bottom ($23) and had a good profit at hand. I also bought Apollo Group Inc. (APOL) stocks and call options. Yahoo still sucks but it owns a substantial part of the Internet real estate and I think it's a good buy at current price. Apollo is a similar story.

I will start to work for Morgan Stanley next week and likely, I could be located in a branch close to your area. Send me an email to if you want to keep in touch. Finally I will be able to work full time for my clients but unfortunately, I may not be able to post as often and as freely in this blog as I did in the “good old” days. I have to check the policies and the laws and very possibly, this post may be my farewell to you, my friends! I am always grateful to your kind and warm words!

Please feel free to post comments on this site if my blogs have ever benefited you in investing and in the best, made you some good cold cash! If you register, you can post your thoughts and ideas here and share with fellow investors, too!

Thank you and good luck!

Feeling about CNTF

Posted by: diarmundo01 on October 6, 2006 9:43 am | In General thoughts | 5 Comments |

Hi,

 I was wondering if you feel that CNTF is still a good Long Buy. Lots of volatility recently ! Tanked since your last post. Might be a good time to get in again ?

 Would appreciate your thoughts ?

Regards.

Symbol Technologies Inc. (SBL) Will Be Bought at $15

Posted by: Dr. Ge on September 16, 2006 9:56 am | In General thoughts | No Comments |

From Saturday's Wall Street Journal "Symbol Technologies Nears Its Sale" (you need subscription to WSJ online to access the article):

Motorola Holds Key Spot
To Win $3.2 Billion Firm;
Auction Follows Difficulties

Symbol Technologies Inc. is winding up an auction to sell itself, people familiar with the matter said, which could result in a sale of the $3.2 billion wireless-equipment company in a matter of days.

Motorola Inc. is in the best position to win the company, though other bidders could also circle as the situation comes to a head, these people said. As in any merger negotiation, final talks could fall apart and a deal may not be completed. Indeed, Symbol, of Holtsville, N.Y., has been one of the most talked-about takeover targets for years, but has always managed to stay independent.

Exact pricing details for a deal weren't available Friday afternoon, though one person said that a deal could come in at a per-share price of roughly $15, which would represent a premium of around 20% to Symbol's trading price Friday. The company has a current market capitalization of $3.2 billion.

I have been trading in and out of SBL several times since last August when its CEO left the company for NCR and Symbol lowered its earning forecast twice. I even bought SBL short term out-of-money call options in the hope to profit if it's bought by another company at a premium. My price target was $16.

As I said in my post "Symbol Technologies (SBL) – A “Following-the-Formula“ Play that Yielded 55% Return",

Selling at $8-$9, market was discounting the worst scenario of SBL as what happened in 2002 when the company faced accounting problems and criminal investigations. However, what was happening in August 2005 was simply an inexperienced CEO hyped the earning expectation too high to deliver. All the company needed was a CEO who could execute. The worst scenario to the company would be that the company kept disappointing the market for next several quarters. But it might be the best scenario to a stock investor: someone would buy it out for Symbol’s enviable list of clients and collection of patents. HP could be a good suitor given its CEO Mark Hurd’s many years experience in the retail technology industry (NCR).

I sold my SBL shares and options to take the sizable profit. The stock may see further upside if RFID finally becomes hot in 2006.

But unfortunately, I don't have any positions in SBL at this time. I missed an opportunity that I foresaw 8 months ago.

An Excellent Market Timing

Posted by: Dr. Ge on September 5, 2006 7:32 pm | In General thoughts | No Comments |

When I posted “Is Market Timing Important to Value Investing?” (also featured in TheStreet.com's 9/1/2006 "Friday's Daily Blog Watch" column) on August 29, China Techfaith Wireless Communication Technology Ltd. (CNTF) was trading at around $7.5.  As I said in that post

I am bullish on the company in longer term because

• it has 2000 skilled and cheap engineers ($500/month for an experienced programmer);
• it has a good established relationship with 2 mobile software powerhouse – Qualcomm and Microsoft;
• it's still the No. 1 mobile design company in China;
• 3G in China will come, probably in 5-6 months;
• it has plenty of cash and a beautiful balance-sheet;
• the company is controlled by the CEO and he hasn't cashed the majority of chips yet;
• the company is buying back its stocks  - rare for a Chinese company and good for investors;

I think price at $7 or below may be a good entry point for CNTF.

It’s indeed a very good buy at $7s. Today the stock closes at $9.34 and that’s an excellent 25% gain in only 4 trading days. In my opinion, despite the recent stock price gain, the company is not out of woods yet. Thus the stock is more likely to behave as a high volatile low-float trading stock in the short term. In long term (2-3 years), the investment thesis that I detailed in my last post still holds.

Electronic Arts Inc. (ERTS) has been doing very well recently. Readers of my blog may remember that I was a buyer at lower $40s. Indeed, ERTS was one of my top holdings (15% of portfolio) in the last several months.  ERTS is exactly the stock I am interested in – the stock of an absolute leader in its industry sells at a deep discount compared to its historic valuation.

One reader asks me whether the home building stock is a good buy now. My answer is that my guess is as good as yours but please be cautious. If you look at how these home builder stocks did in the last housing cycle, today’s price may not be that attractive. The low P/E ratio does not matter because it can drop from a very attractive 5 to an ugly negative number in a very short period if there will be a housing market meltdown.

Yahoo! Sucks!

Posted by: Dr. Ge on August 31, 2006 9:18 pm | In General thoughts | 4 Comments |

Yahoo just messed up its Finance Message Board totally a month ago now it took away the real time quote. I really don’t understand how the people at Yahoo can make such stupid, ill-advised, ridiculous decisions. People in charge of Yahoo!Finance deserve to be fired many times!

Several months ago, when Yahoo went down to $32 a share, a reader asked me whether it’s good time to buy. I said no. Now YHOO trades at $28. I have been a Yahoo user since 1996 and I never see that Yahoo has become such a mess that no one even cares about fixing so many so obvious problems. People there have nothing productive to do so they keep changing things from good to BAD. Everyone hated the new Yahoo message board but Yahoo went for it anyway. Now Yahoo took away the real time quote that everyone loved and made its portfolio tool useless.

I hope Google take advantage of this godsend opportunity. It’s rare to see this kind of mistake made by your main competitor!

Stockpickers.org and TheStreet.com

Posted by: Dr. Ge on August 29, 2006 7:50 pm | In General thoughts | No Comments |

TheStreet.com included my post “Are We in a Bear Market?” in its August 11th "The Daily Blog Watch" column. Thank you, James Altucher! The readers who bought the stocks mentioned in my post should have done very well.

Stockpickers.org now has 30+ registered contributors but no one except RMA and I post regularly. Please contribute your thoughts, ideas and it indeed helps yourself as you write down before you buy.

Stockpickers.org recently installed Dr. Dave’s Spam Karma 2.2 and it “ate” all the comment spams alive. I highly recommend this plugin if you run a WordPress based blog site.