It looks like some shareholders of Sears Holdings, which is controlled by Edward Lampert’s Bay Harbour, Florida-based ESL Partners, are a big fan of scorched earth tactics. After all, the stock rose 11.75 percent, to $62.09, on Tuesday after the company said it may spin off its well-performing Lands’ End and auto center businesses. This means investors think that the company’s plan to get rid of its better sources of earnings is a good thing. The stock has already been held up by the company’s selling of some of its best selling stores.
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TPG-Axon Capital Management’s Dinakar Singh thinks the macroeconomic environment is more attractive for stocks in Asian countries such as Japan and China. Speaking at Invest for Kids, a conference held in Chicago to raise money for economically disadvantaged children, the hedge fund manager also singled out Japanese electronics maker Hitachi Ltd. and China’s largest railroad Daqin Railway.
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Herbalife chief financial officer John DeSimone told investors the re-audit of its financial results for the 2010-2012 period should be completed by the end of the year. After that, the company will mull either a debt offering or share repurchases, the executive said on an earnings call. “We’re a big fan of share buybacks,” DeSimone reportedly said. “We were looking to do a debt deal, at time of the KPMG issue.” The stock closed unchanged at $67.92 on Tuesday.
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The Illinois State Board of Investment has raised the amount of money it is setting aside for hedge funds to 10 percent of its $13.4 billion in assets, according to Pensions & Investments. The Chicago pension fund raised its allocations to the funds-of-funds firms Rock Creek Group and Entrust Partners to $502 million each and also bumped up its investment in funds-of-funds firm Mesirow Advanced Strategies to $335 million. The three firms will also be permitted to expand the strategies in which they invest, according to the report. ISBI also terminated two managers — IronBridge Capital Management, which ran $182 million in active U.S. small-cap core equities, and Credo Capital Management, which managed $71 million in active U.S. midcap growth equities — for performance reasons.
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Shares of Apple, which is a favorite holding of hedge funds, dropped 2.43 percent, to $517.02, the day after it reported quarterly results that received a mixed reception on Wall Street. Obviously more people were unhappy than were pleased.
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Hedge fund favorite Google jumped more than 21 points, or more than 2 percent, to close at $1036.24.
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Shares of Yelp dropped more than 4 percent in after hours trading Tuesday after the online review site for local businesses reported a larger loss than analysts expected, although revenues did come in slightly higher than forecasts.
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Shares of LinkedIn, which rose 2 percent on Tuesday, climbed somewhat in jittery after hours trading after earnings and revenues at the professional social networking site came in higher than expected in the third quarter. However, some investors are concerned that guidance for the fourth quarter and full year is below the consensus estimate.
