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.