Wall Street Folly

It's Official: We've moved! Our new home is www.wallstreetfolly.com

Please join us over at our new Wall Street Folly site.  We're still working out some kinks, but it's up and running! (Note, if for some reason you're not directed to that site, keep trying.  It gonna take a bit for the redirection of our wallstreetfolly.com url to be propogated through the system.)

Hedge Fund 13F Chart Study update: Pershing Square Capital

 Here's the 13F Chart study for Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Capital updated for Q4 2008 (priced as of 3/3/09). 

Ackman's misses Target and pisses off investors ($TGT); No bonuses for Barclays' directors; Goldentree's dutch auction; Harvard endowment is endowed with 25% less staff; Hedge fund intelligence; Funds of funds troubles

• Ackman Tries to Mollify Target Fund Investors
• Barclays halts directors' bonuses as profits fall
• Going Dutch: Goldentree's Auction Option
• Management for Harvard Endowment to Cut 25% of Staff
• Hedge fund to set up intricate intelligence web
• Bleak times for the funds of hedge funds

Charlie Rose: A conversation with Bill Ackman - "It's the single best time in my career that I've seen to invest"

Charlie Rose spoke to Pershing Square Capital's Bill Ackman on Nov 11 (last night).  It's a great interview -- he talks about the state of hedge funds, GM, credit default swaps, the rating agencies, the short selling ban, FNM/FRE, etc.

Bill Ackman: GM should do a prepackaged bankruptcy

Pershing Square Capital's Bill Ackman has his own thoughts about General Motors, which he naturally wasn't shy about sharing.  Let them do a prepack.  We agree.

Where have we been?

We've gotten emails asking where we've been in the past couple of days since posting has been light.  Yes, we've been AWOL.  Given the choice to watch the market continue to crap out or to go to the Value Investing Conference to listen to the likes of Bill Ackman and Carl Icahn, we actually donned a suit and chose the latter.  Mea culpa.  :)

It was an interesting conference indeed.  A lot of glum faces, a lot of nervous jokes about the state of the market and comparisons to the crash in '87, just about universal complaining about the misguided short selling ban (at least among those we spoke to, although maybe that's a function of the company we keep), but there was also a sense of optimism, that maybe all of the moves in the past week or so might actually start to take hold.  And people are also talking about the many opportunities they're seeing in stocks as well as the astronomically huge yields on some of the high yield bonds out there.  After a two year period where we've been extremely bearish, we're even starting to become a bit more optimistic.  We don't think that the market has bottomed yet, but we're more likely to nibble. 

Hedge Fund 13F Charts have been updated; Soros and Blue Ridge Capital were added

We updated all of the 13F charts this weekend.  In addition, Soros' top 200 positions have been added, as well as Blue Ridge Capital.

The link is here.

Hedge Fund 13F Chart Study additions: Avenue Capital, Eton Park Capital, Jabre Capital, Lone Pine Capital, Pershing Square Capital, Tudor Investment Corp

We've added the following 13F chart studies:

• Marc Lasry's Avenue Capital
• Eric Mindich's Eton Park Capital
• Philippe Jabre's Jabre Capital
• Stephen Mandel's Lone Pine Capital
• Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Capital
• Paul Tudor Jones' Tudor Investment Corp

All of them can be found here.

In addition, all of the original chart studies were updated as of Friday's close.  They can also be found at the above link.

More pearls of wisdom from the Ira Sohn conference

On Wednesday the annual Ira Sohn conference was held, attended by Wall Street's elite.  Top hedge fund managers talked their books, offering up their favorite (and in some cases, not so favorite) stocks.  Greenlight Capital's David Einhorn offered up his favorite short idea, Lehman Brothers, and that trade is the focus of this morning's Heard on the Street column that we mentioned earlier.  Carl Icahn also spoke, dissing Barack Obama.  Here are some of the other ideas that came out of the conference, as detailed by Reuters:

*Bill Ackman, Pershing Square Capital: Wendy's International, which has agreed to be bought by Nelson Peltz's Triarc Cos, the Arby's restaurants owner. "We own all we can, a share less than the poison pill," said Ackman.

*Michael Price, MFP Investors: buy Allied   Irish Banks but don't buy recent rights offerings by Citigroup or UBS. "Citi's   perpetual preferreds have nowhere to go but down." Price also likes   Vornado Realty Trust, McGraw-Hill Cos and GenCorp Inc  

*Bill Miller, Legg Mason Capital     Capital Management: buy AES Corp, Freddie Mac and Health Net, which he hopes     will merge with Aetna, which the fund also holds.    

*Richard Pzena, Pzena Investment       Management: buy Citigroup Inc . "This is classic value. There is lots       of stress. When we come out of this, the upside is huge."    

FACTBOX: Stock picks from Sohn Investment conference - Reuters

MBIA takes a round against Bill Ackman as Warburg Pincus injects it with cash

Maybe they're pissing good money after bad, but Warburg Pincus is injecting $1 billion of capital into MBIA. That kind of news has to give activist investor Bill Ackman at least a bit of indigestion after his very public bet that the company would implode and that he'd make a bundle for charity.