Morning Brief: Stifel Cuts Price Target on Facebook

Shares of Facebook, the most popular hedge fund stock, fell another 2.7 percent on Thursday, to close at $164.89, amid a widespread rout in the stock market. It also didn’t help that investment bank Stifel cut its price target for the social media pioneer to $168 from $195, according to Marketwatch.com. A research note compared the company to eBay circa 2014, asserting that Facebook is “an unstructured content business built on trust that lost that trust prior to implementing policies to add structure and process.” Stifel also maintained its hold rating on the stock. “We would buy all of our Buy-rated stocks and many of our Hold-rated stocks before we would buy Facebook shares, given the information available to us,” Stifel wrote, according to the report.

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Chaitanya Mehra, managing director and head of global commodities at Och-Ziff Capital Management, is leaving the multistrategy firm to run a new firm backed by Izzy Englander’s Millennium Management, according to Reuters, citing two sources familiar with the matter. The new entity, which initially will only trade Millennium’s capital, could launch by September, according to the report.

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Starboard Value liquidated virtually its entire stake in Steward Information Services. Earlier this week title insurance giant Fidelity National Financial said it agreed to acquire Stewart for $1.2 billion. The deal is expected to close by the first or second quarter of 2019.

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Bill Ackman is still struggling to turn things around at Pershing Square Capital Management. Its public fund, Pershing Square Holdings, is off slightly so far this month, through March 20. As a result, it is now down 6.20 percent year-to-date.