The stock market’s five-year rally has taken a toll on short selling specialists, including the master of them, James Chanos. His New York hedge fund firm, Kynikos Associates, disclosed in a regulatory filing that assets under management were $4 billion at the end of February. This was down from $6.5 billion just two years earlier. Last year, Kynikos Opportunity Fund, a long-short fund, was down 14 percent, according to an earlier report by The Wall Street Journal. It is not known how Ursus, Kynikos’ U.S.-oriented short fund, or Kriticos, its global short fund, fared last year when the S&P 500 surged more than 30 percent and other global indices did nearly as well or better.
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Daniel Och’s OZ Master fund lost 2 percent last month, trimming the multi-strategy fund’s gain for the year to a mere 0.31 percent, according to a regulatory filing. OZ Europe Master Fund lost 1.21 percent in March and is now barely profitable, while OZ Asia Master Fund fell 4.06 percent in March and is now down 6.66 percent for the year. Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC, the New York-based publicly-traded firm reported it had $42.7 billion under management as of April 1, up $400 million in the past month despite the losses in its three main funds.
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UBS raised its target price for Marvell Technology, a popular hedge fund stock, to $17 from $14. Even so, it kept its rating on the stock at Neutral. On Tuesday, a court ruled that the computer chip maker must pay Carnegie Mellon University $1.54 billion in a patent infringement lawsuit, but a UBS report issued Wednesday says the damages were at the lower end of the range of expected outcomes. “We view this positive development as removing some of the key litigation risks associated with the company,” the report says.
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John Burbank III’s Passport Capital disclosed it owns 5.1 percent of 58.com, a Chinese classified advertisements website. Passport holds its passive stake through one million ADRs. Burbank has been bullish on Chinese internet stocks over the past year.
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The Credit Suisse Liquid Alternative Beta Index, usually the month’s first stab at determining how hedge funds performed, rose 0.33 percent in March. It is now up 0.87 percent for the year. The Long/Short Equity strategy was the top performer for the month, gaining 0.65 percent while Event Driven is leading the way for the quarter, up 2.87 percent. The LAB series of indices try to replicate the return profiles of hedge fund strategies using liquid, tradable instruments.
