Corsair Capital Q4 Letter

Corsair Capital is out with their Q4 letter (hat tip to Marketfolly for posting). In Q4 they were up 6.3% net and for al of 2011 they were down 3.7% this stands in stark contrast to their annualized return since inception of 14.4% (they were started in 1991 so its a pretty stellar track record).

Corsair-Capital-Q4-2011



Corsair also included a write up of one of their favorite positions - Aperam (APMA NA). Aperam are a stainless steel manufacturer that Corsair thinks offers 200% upside potential. Aperam was spun off from Arcelor Mittal and Corsair thinks they are worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $38-$63.

Enjoy.

Corsair-Aperam-Thesis

Bill Ackman on CNBC

Bill Ackman of Pershing Square Capital fame was on CNBC yesterday to discuss his opinion on JC Penney's new plan as well as his position in Canadian Pacific. He also talks about what he thinks the issues at Sears are and where Eddie Lampert has failed. He then described in detail his plan on Canadian Pacific and how he plans on increasing value.

Enjoy:

George Soros on CNBC

George Soros was on CNBC today discussing his concerns with the pending European crisis. He thinks that Germany has dictated too much of the current terms. He thinks the Euro could break if they financial system of each country becomes more self contained. He thinks Germany is pushing the wrong policies (austerity) as it is creating a deflationary spiral.

Enjoy.

Kerrisdale Capital - Sahm Adrangi - Q4 2011 Letter

Below please find Kerrisdale Capital's Q4 2011 Letter. For those who are unfamiliar with Kerrisdale, they are led by Sahm Adrangi. The fund launched in July 2009 and was one of the first funds to start exposing chinese reverse-merger frauds. This clearly suited them well as they were up a staggering 198.3% in 2011. Since inception they have generated gains of 588% or an IRR of 103%. The letter includes a nice write-up on why they are now long Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL).

Enjoy.
Kerrisdale Quarterly Letter 12-31-11

Ken Griffin - Citadel Q4 2011 Letter to Investors

It appears that Citadel has finally recovered above their high water mark. In 2008 the firm had a staggering 50% losses. But slowly and surely the fund has recalimed these losses. In 2011 they returned around 20% (pretty good considering the market). The letter is a little lovey-dovey and light on good intellectual nuggets.

Kenneth Griffin's year-end letter to investors

Andrew Feldstein of BlueMountain Capital on Bloomberg

Andrew Feldstein, head of BlueMountain Capital Management, was on Bloomberg to talk about the role of credit derivatives in financial markets. For those who are not familiar with Andrew, he worked at JPM (he was head of structured products) before founding BlueMountain. Since founding BlueMountain has been incredibly successful - he was among the highest paid hedge fund managers in both 2010 and 2011. In 2010 they returned around 9% from trading CDS and CMBS. In 2011 the credit fund (as of October) was up 3.3% and the long/short group was up around 9%.

He currently sees opportunities, with borrowers who previously relied on the securitization market. He thinks there is a real opportunity to provide capital to these borrowers that no longer have access to capital.

Enjoy.

Craig Effron of Scoggin Capital on Bloomberg

Craig Effron of Scoggin Capital was on Bloomberg today. He discussed some of his current positions as well as his thoughts on CDS. Scoggin likes the asset managers in the U.S. He thinks the rate of return on bonds is so low that pension funds etc. will need to put money into alternative assets in order to meet their obligations. The act of reaching for higher yield/returns should push up AUM in the publicly traded alternative asset managers (think Blackstone, Apollo Group, KKR, Och-Ziff, Fortress, etc.).

For those who aren't familiar with Scoggin, they were seeded by Paul Tudor Jones and have had really good returns.

Enjoy.

Greenlight Capital Q4 2011 Letter

For the year Greenlight returned 2.9%, 2.7%, and 1.9% across their various funds. They have annualized 20% net of fees since inception. In the letter he discusses the European crises, some of his short positions (FSLR and GMCR) and his position that he shares with Kyle Bass on the weakening of the Japanese Yen. He also goes on to discuss Dell and Xerox is some detail.

Enjoy.
Greenlight

Tom Brown of Second Curve Capital discussed Citi's earnings

Tom Brown of Second Curve Capital was on Bloomberg today discussing Citi's (NYSE: C) earnings release. He disclosed that he is long both Citi and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC). He think that the discount to book value is too great and that the capital markets in Q1 have improved such that the trading revenue will likely be better next quarter.

For those not in the know, Tom Brown was the head of the financials groups at Tiger Management back in the 90s with Julian Robertson. When Tiger shut down he went out on his own. He has a pretty good track record despite getting pretty beat up in 2008.

Enjoy.

Boaz Weinstein of Saba Capital Management on Bloomberg TV

At the end of 2011 Boaz Weinstein, founder of Saba Capital Management LP, was on Bloomberg TV talking about his strategy for Europe and credit relative value investing. He talked about how Europe will be the main focus for the markets in 2012. He thinks Italian debt above 7% is attractive relative to the equity markets and the corporate debt market. He then spoke about Greek CDS and what value he sees there. Overall its a pretty interesting and rather rare interview with Boaz.

Enjoy.

Bloomberg Markets on Most Profitable Hedge Funds of 2011

Bloomberg Markets is out with their annual 100 Top Performing Hedge Funds of the year. For 2011 they claim the champion is Chase Coleman of Tiger Global who returned 45% followed by Renaissance Technologies with their Institutional Equities fund that returned 33.1%. The overall data is pretty interesting and they do a fairly in depth summary of Chase and Tiger Global discussing their current strategy as well as their history.

Enjoy.

Bloomberg Markets Magazine the Worlds 100 Richest Hedge Funds February 2011

T2 Partners Year End Letter

T2 Partners is out with their year end letter. For the year they were down 24.9%. They make the argument that they think their underperformance is a temporary phenomenon and they will likely snap back quickly. In 2012 they should be a bit happy that NFLX, which they were formerly short but then turned around and became long on, has run up something like 25% YTD.

He then lists out his largest long and short positions. Appears he is a big bull on JC Penney (JCP) and Citi. Interestingly Ethan Allen is their largest short - they have not discussed this yet publicly.

Enjoy.

Tilson Full Year

Pershing Square Letter to Canadian Pacific Railway

For those who haven't been reading the news as of late there is a pretty interesting fight going on up north between Bill Ackman of Pershing Square Capital and the CEO and Board of Canadian Pacific Railway ("CP"). Bill Ackman thinks CP is undervalued and has taken a large ($1B) stake backing up his conviction. He has proposed a new CEO and a potential board shakeup to close the gap between intrinsic and trading value. The Board at CP didn't like this rebble rousing and sent him a letter. This is his response to that letter.

Enjoy.
77078248-Pershing-CP-Jan3-2012

Jeff Gundlach / DoubleLine Slides

Today Jeff Gundlach of DoubleLine had a conference call giving his outlook on the market and economy. As always it was fairly enjoyable. Most interestingly he said he thinks gold will pull back over the next few months and he is fairly bullish on the dollar. I read that as saying he is bearish on the Euro and their situation. So as the world derisks they will move risk dollars into American securities (debt, equities, etc.).

During the talk he went through a powerpoint presentation that had some pretty interesting slide. This can be seen below. It is worth clicking through if you have a couple minutes to spare.

Enjoy.
1-5-12_JEG_Just_Markets - FINAL JEG

Jeff Gundlach on CNBC discussing his positioning

Jeff Gundlach of Doubline was on CNBC today discussing his fund and his views. He discussed his views on long-term debt as well as how he views his fund and why he thinks indexing in bonds is horribly flawed.

Enjoy.

Jim Rogers on CNBC

Jim Rogers was on CNBC earlier today talking about how he is buying the Euro (quite the contrarian play considering all the bearish sentiment). Rogers also made a case for why he thinks the Swiss Franc will have a good run in 2012 as the Yen and Dollar lose confidence as reserve currencies. He also thinks that the Swiss Central Bank’s attempts to keep the currency from strengthening above 1.20 against the euro — moves aimed at protecting Swiss exports — will ultimately fail (this point was particularly interesting as it has the potential for large overnight moves i.e. Pound Sterling in early 90s).


Enjoy.