헤지펀드 매니저에게서 듣는다: 2012년 투자 아이디어

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Hedge-fund Managers to watch in 2012

How to gain market insight from Wall Street’s biggest, boldest investors

Hedge funds operate like secret societies. Except for the initiated few who entrust their fortunes to fund managers, information is difficult to access. But there are a few sources, albeit limited, that provide clues to what hedge funds are doing with their billions.

Institutional investment managers have to disclose their equity holdings 45 days after the end of each quarter via 13F forms per Securities and Exchange Commission regulation. The stocks listed in these forms can be compared with the same filings from the previous quarter to see how positions have changed. 13F filings can be found on the SEC’s homepage

Websites devoted to hedge funds are good sources for information and investment tips. Some of the more popular ones include Insider Monkey, ValueWalk and Market Folly, which also post comments to followers on Twitter.

Goldman Sachs tracks about 700 hedge funds with gross equity assets of $1.2 trillion. Twice a year, it compiles a Hedge Fund Very Important Position, or VIP, list of 50 stocks that “matter most” to hedge funds. These are stocks that appear most often among the top 10 holdings of long/short equity hedge funds.

The top 10 VIP stocks at the end of September included: Apple Inc., Google Inc., Microsoft Corp., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Qualcomm Inc., General Motors Co., LyondellBasell Industries, Liberty Interactive Corp., and U.S.-listed shares of Chinese Internet search engine Baidu Inc.

But sometimes the best sources are the hedge fund managers themselves. They do not actively seek media attention but they are also not shy about speaking out when the opportunity presents itself. Here are five managers worth watching in 2012:

1. Jim Chanos: Kynikos Associates

If there is such a thing as street cred for short sellers, Jim Chanos of Kynikos Associates has it in spades after calling out Enron’s accounting fraud before the market got wind of it a decade ago.

Chanos’ latest target is China — the promised land for many investors. Chanos says China is a proverbial train wreck in progress.

“The only way the Chinese government can continue to bail out everyone is to print more money, which will lead to inflation. But people are depositing money [in banks] at below inflation,” Chanos said in an interview with MarketWatch in October.

Chanos pointed to what he believes are clear signs of excess supply in the country’s commercial real-estate sector.

“The numbers are falling faster than we thought,” he said during the interview.

“Real estate sales in September and October, which are peak months, fell 40%-60% on-year.”

After estimated growth of 10.4% in 2010, China’s gross domestic product is expected to expand by 9.1% this year and slow to 8.4% in 2012, the World Bank said recently. These figures aren’t shabby but demonstrate a cooling trend, which, for a government with 1.3 billion people to feed, will require intricate policy maneuvers.

Chanos told a Reuters-sponsored investment conference earlier this month that he’s betting against mining companies and construction companies doing business with China. He said he’s also looking to profit from declining share prices of certain Chinese banks, including Agricultural Bank of China Ltd.

2. David Einhorn: Greenlight Capital

David Einhorn, who in 2008 presciently warned that Lehman Brothers was undercapitalized, is a meticulous person. For his presentation at the Value Investing Congress in October, he came equipped with a 110-page PowerPoint presentation on why his fund is shorting Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc. titled, “GAAP-uccino.”

Among other problems, Einhorn has criticized the company for lack of transparency and questionable business practices. He also believes there are too many warning flags and that it doesn’t make sense to accept the company’s income statement at face value.

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters shares, which closed at $92.09 a share on Oct. 14, lost 10% of its value within hours of his presentation on Oct. 17 and since then have lost half of their value, partly due to concerns about sales growth.

Yet Einhorn’s fund has also had its challenges this year. Greenlight Capital reported a 6.2% decline in the first three quarters of 2011, including a 1.2% drop in the third quarter, according to his fund’s investor letter dated Nov. 7.

“It’s been an eventful third quarter. While the market had a broad decline with a lot of volatility, our conservatively positioned portfolio essentially went sideways with much lower volatility. Generally, our longs fell a bit more than the market, but our shorts fell even more and our macro investments helped mitigate the loss from being net long in a declining market,” Greenlight said.

Greenlight Capital Re Ltd., the insurance company Einhorn controls, released its investment account’s returns as of the end of November. That portfolio showed a 4% gain for the first 11 months of 2011, helped by a 9.6% advance in October and November. As of Nov. 30, the portfolio’s largest long positions included Apple, General Motors, Microsoft and Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF.

3. Mark Spitznagel: Universa Investments

Mark Spitznagel’s Universa Investments, based in Santa Monica, Calif., specializes in convex tail hedging and investing — or in plain English, protecting investors from extreme negative movements in equity markets. This strategy has paid off handsomely for Spitznagel’s clients. 

When the S&P 500 tanked nearly 17% in October 2008, Spitznagel’s funds rose between 65% to 115%, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Universa’s strategies are based on the black swan theory popularized in author Nassim Nicholas Taleb best-selling book, “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.“ In 1999, Spitznagel and Taleb founded a tail-risk fund, Empirica Capital, which shut down in 2005, and Taleb today has an advisory role at Universa.

The black swan theory refers to rare or highly improbable events that have a major market impact which, in hindsight, can be rationalized. Japan’s earthquake, and the ensuing tsunami, in March are viewed as a black swan event, for example.

Established in 2007, Universa manages $6 billion on behalf of Chinese and Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds as well as North American and European institutional investors. In July 2009, Spitznagel launched a fund betting on hyperinflation as governments around the world prepared to flood the market with even more liquidity to prevent the global economy from stalling.

His funds recorded gains of 20%-25% in 2011 as of August, outperforming many of its peers.

So far this year, the S&P 500’s performance is flat. But the U.S. market may be headed for big selloff, according to Spitznagel, given his view that stocks are significantly overvalued.

“An extreme selloff from this high level, like that of a few years ago, should not surprise anyone casually acquainted with market history. To those who can’t be bothered, I’m sure black swans lie ahead,” said Spitznagel in comments emailed to MarketWatch.

In a report issued in June, he noted that there is a 20% chance of “a larger than 40% correction within the next few years.”

Spitznagel, who wrote the report after analyzing 110 years’ worth of market data, said there is “clear and rigorous evidence of a direct relationship between overvaluation and subsequent extreme losses in the aggregate stock market.”

4. Bill Ackman: Pershing Square Capital Management

Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management is an activist hedge fund firm that oversees about $9 billion.

Ackman is best known for shorting bond insurers MBIA Inc. and Ambac Financial Group before they were undone by heavy losses from the mortgage debacle.

But his fund has missed the mark recently, reporting a decline of 14.6% for the year through September, according to an investor letter provided by Valuewalk.com.

In the letter, Ackman said he is not bothered by market volatility.

“We focus our attention on the value and business progress of the companies we own rather than their daily market quotations. Because we manage an unleveraged, and often negatively leveraged portfolio, we have the luxury of largely ignoring short-term market movements in our holdings,” he said.

Pershing Square Capital is the largest shareholder of J.C. Penney Co., with a 26.1% economic stake in the retailer.

Since Pershing disclosed its investment in the company in October 2010, Ackman has joined the board and engineered the recruitment of Ron Johnson, the architect behind Apple’s wildly successful retail strategy.

Earlier this month, J.C. Penney announced a 16.6% stake in Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc. as part of a strategic alliance. Under the deal, the department store will host Martha Stewart stores that offer home goods designed by Stewart’s company.

“The business is undermanaged so there are many areas for improvement that can drive enormous value creation,” Ali Namvar, a member of Pershing’s investing team, said at a recent hedge fund conference.

5. John Paulson: Paulson & Co.

John Paulson’s Paulson & Co. is one of the largest hedge-fund firms in the U.S. with around $30 billion under management.

Paulson rose to prominence in 2007 when he bet against mortgage-related securities as the housing market crumbled. He also holds a significant long position in the SPDR Gold Trust ETF a stake that has been hugely profitable but has come under pressure this year.

Paulson lately has been on the wrong side of some other high-profile trades.

He turned bullish on the housing market early in 2010 and underestimated the severity of the European sovereign debt crisis. Then he invested heavily in financial institutions including Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp., which have been battered by worries about the frail U.S. economy and Europe’s failure to rein in its financial crisis.

In its most recent 13F filing, Paulson’s fund reported that as of Sept. 30 it had trimmed its stake in both Citigroup and SPDR Gold Trust, while adding to Bank of America.

His flagship fund Paulson Advantage Ltd. reported a drop of 32.7% for the year at the end of September, according to an investor letter provided by Valuewalk.com. Other Paulson funds had also posted losses heading into the fourth quarter.

Paulson’s dismal investment performance this year prompted the fund manager to give shareholders an apology. “Year-to-date 2011 performance is the worst in the firm’s 17-year history. We are disappointed and apologize for these results,” the hedge fund’s letter said. “We have learned from the 2011 experience and are committed to returning investors to their high water marks and to producing above-average returns for the long term.”

 

(인용: Sue Chang, MarketWatch)