What’s news around the hedge fund industry for Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2012:

Around the web

Citco wins Marshall Wace mandate, ending Citi relationship. (HFMWeek)

Global macro, managed futures heating up. (Pensions & Investments)

How Goldman Sachs helped Greece hide its debt and made €2.8 billion disappear. (Daily Kos)

Leon Cooperman on where to invest. (Bloomberg TV)

Greek crisis raises new fears over credit default swaps. (DealBook)

Survey: Most 2011 hedge fund start-ups were equities strategies. (FINalternatives)

Steven Cohen’s ex-wife seeks sequel for explosive lawsuit. (FINalternatives)

Hedge funds take another look at Greek debt. (DealBook)

Gibralter expects hedge fund boost following legislation update. (HFMWeek)

The Volcker rule, made bloated and weak. (DealBook)

Hedge funds have toes, not feet, in the stock market waters. (WSJ.com)

Source says Mets sell 7 minority shares; Steve Cohen rumored to be among buyers. (Newsday)

James Chanos and Jamie Zimmerman talk about the history of the hedge fund industry and government regulation. (Bloomberg TV)

‘… I challenge you to distinguish a naked prostitute from any other naked woman.’ (The New York Times)

Terra Firma’s Guy Hands takes swing at hedge funds. (WSJ’s The Source)

Two Wall Street players – Guggenheim Capital’s Alexander Redeka and Timothy Day – ensnared in new probe. (ProPublica)

Meredith Whitney lands deal for book about municipal bond market problems. (DealBook)

Currency market in quiet mode. (WSJ.com)

New Seward & Kissel study looks at start-up funds. (HedgeFund.net, with link to study)

SEC charges Chinese executives with fraud. (DealBook)

Hedge funds re-enter market as M&A activity picks up. (MarketWatch)

People moves

Goldman hedge fund group chief C. Howard Wietschner retires. (Bloomberg)

Borrowed from Reuters Insider, below are graphics that depict which hedge funds finished the fourth quarter of 2011 with the most assets and which stocks the top 30 hedge funds are buying and selling.

Top 5 hedge funds

Top 30 hedge funds – top 5 decreases in existing positions

Top 30 hedge funds – top 5 increases in existing positions

Top 30 hedge funds – top 5 new positions

Top 30 hedge funds – top 5 sell-outs

Jim Rogers says that the 130-billion-euro Greek bailout plan is an artificial feel-good factor ahead of French, U.S. and German elections.

“Look at this Greece deal; it’s not solving the problem,” Rogers told Reuters Insider’s Axel Threlfall. “It’s just pushing things … kicking the can down the road. But pretty soon, Axel, we’ll be out of road. We can’t kick it much further.”

There is always a big to-do whenever the latest SEC Form 13F filings become available. Hedge fund journalists, in particular, enjoy digging in to see what securities the big names have bought or sold over the preceding quarter. Tracking the changes in a manager’s portfolio holdings can give an indication of what those managers think about the companies whose shares they own, or other holdings like gold, which a fund might own through exchange-traded fund shares.

However as a true hedge fund sentiment indicator, the 13F makes for an imperfect proxy, at best. It includes no information about short positions, nor does it allow for tracking of portfolio moves over the course of a quarter. There’s only an aggregate number—the total market value of the individual equity securities—for each of the securities at quarter-end.

That’s a pretty big caveat, which isn’t meant to take anything away from the analysis done by Street of Walls. They blasted out their Q4 2011 analysis of hedge fund holdings based on 13F filings. The entire report is embedded below, but for highlight purposes, here’s what they found:

- The most crowded new ideas during the quarter were DLPH, LMCA, and GLD. Other new positions shared among hedge funds but with less overlap were ORCL, VRUS, QCOM, YHOO, URI, TXN, WFC, and GOOG.
- Fund managers are adding exposure back into Financials and Healthcare after huge declines the last several quarters. Government reimbursement risks associated with the Healthcare sector and low rates and mortgage related put-back problems in Financials may have led managers to trim and exit positions within the space over 2Q11 and 3Q11 and re-enter under attractive valuations in 4Q11.
- We found a majority of hedge funds largest positions were shared amongst the hedge funds in our universe. AAPL was by far the most crowded position in the top 8 holdings for hedge funds: Greenlight, Lone Pine, Blue Ridge, Coatue, and Tiger all have AAPL as the largest position in their holdings. Other large crowded positions include GOOG, QCOM, LMCA, and AMT.
- On average the funds listed below bought companies with a 2011 forward price to earnings ratio of 18.6x. Appaloosa and Baupost bought into the higher valuation stocks at 47.4x and 28.6x respectively while Glenview and Greenlight bought into much lower valuations at 13.4x and 14.1x respectively.

Street of Walls Hedge Fund Intelligence 4Q11

Under the Securities Act of 1933, the U.S. The Securities and Exchange Commission allows companies to offer securities for sale without having to register those securities or file periodic reports, provided the companies meet exemptions laid out in Regulation D. For hedge funds’ purposes, those securities are limited partnerships. When a hedge fund firm sells its first securities, it is required by Reg D to file a Form D, which includes names and addresses of the company’s executive officers and stock promoters and the date of the first sale in the offering. As such, Form D filings can be a useful tool to find new hedge fund launches.

Periodically, HedgeWorld publishes links to recent Form D filings. Here are the latest:

Lyxor/Sandler Plus Offshore Fund Ltd

Lyxor/GLG Emerging Equity Fund Ltd

Lyxor Diversified Fund Ltd

Triad Furtures

MCM Eleven, LP

Kazazian Capital Offshore Fund, Ltd.

—Compiled by Angela Sormani

What’s news around the hedge fund industry for Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2012:

Around the web

Proprietary trading puts banks at serious risk. (American Banker’s BankThink)

BofAML hedge fund index up 0.8% as of Feb. 15. (FINalternatives)

CME doubles stake in Dubai Mercantile Exchange. (DealBook)

SEC surrender continues with Bear Stearns bankers’ deal. (William D. Cohan on Bloomberg.com)

Attempt to increase hedge fund tax shakes Connecticut industry. (Connecticut Mirror)

E.U. adopts new rules on short selling and credit default swaps. (Finextra)

Alix Capital launches investable single-strategy UCITS indices. (FINalternatives)

Q&A: Currensee aims to revolutionize money-under-management CTA world. (FINalternatives)

Here is why the Dow passed 13,000 on Tuesday. (ZeroHedge)

As Dow passes 13,000 in nominal terms, here’s the ‘real’ picture. (ZeroHedge)

Starting your own hedge fund? Here’s the question everyone’s going to ask you. (Clusterstock)

European institutional investors to lean more on hedge funds. (Pensions & Investments)

Fed writes sweeping rules from behind closed doors. (WSJ.com)

Investor sues Paulson over Sino-Forest wager. (WSJ.com)

Morningstar reports hedge fund performance for January, asset flows through December. (Opalesque)

Fahim Imam-Sadeque in court battle with BlueBay Asset Management over ‘ÂŁ1.7 million lunch’. (Daily Mail)

Peter Thiel is Ron Paul’s billionaire sugar daddy. (The Atlantic)

Volcker rule predictions. (Economics of Contempt)

Ex-bond high-flier Alexander Rekeda is warned by the SEC. (WSJ.com)

A Hartford split, like John Paulson wants, could be hard. (Deal Journal)

Fleet-footed moves keep Cazenove Multi-Manager Diversity Tactical Fund on top. (FundWeb)

Sergei Aleynikov took the code, but was it a federal crime? (DealBook)

Simon Lack, author of “The Hedge Fund Mirage,” says overcapitalized hedge funds with high fees can generate big profits for their managers, but not for those who invest in the funds.

“The hedge fund industry has made huge amounts of money,” Lack says. “It’s just that the money hasn’t made its way back to the clients. And it wasn’t always that way. In the late ’90s, hedge fund investors did really well; there just weren’t many of them.” Read the rest of this entry »

What’s news around the hedge fund industry for Monday, Feb. 20, 2012:

An abbreviated President’s Day version today.

Around the web

Jim Rogers favors euros and precious metals, avoids the pound and U.S. stocks. (Business Intelligence)

Travelodge to get financing from Avenue Capital Group, GoldenTree Asset Management amid restructuring. (Bloomberg)

Impact of U.S. insider trading crackdown spreads. (Financial Times)

CFTC to force hedge fund managers to register. (COOConnect)

Hedge funds ‘have to try harder’. (Financial Times)

Convertible arbitrage off to a good start: Edhec. (IPE.com)

Beware of hedge funds seeking information, Austrailan SIC warns. (The Australian)

Volcker said to lobby SEC chairman personally on Volcker rule. (Bloomberg)

People moves

GAM makes two U.K. hires. (HFMWeek)

Under the Securities Act of 1933, the U.S. The Securities and Exchange Commission allows companies to offer securities for sale without having to register those securities or file periodic reports, provided the companies meet exemptions laid out in Regulation D. For hedge funds’ purposes, those securities are limited partnerships. When a hedge fund firm sells its first securities, it is required by Reg D to file a Form D, which includes names and addresses of the company’s executive officers and stock promoters and the date of the first sale in the offering. As such, Form D filings can be a useful tool to find new hedge fund launches.

Periodically, HedgeWorld publishes links to recent Form D filings. Here are the latest:

BTG Pactual Absoluto Fund - Portfolio E LLC

Thompson Peak Capital, LP

Espial Capital Partners Offshore, Ltd.

Espial Capital Partners, L.P.

Arrowgrass Distressed Opportunities LP

—Compiled by Angela Sormani

What’s news around the hedge fund industry for Friday, Feb. 17, 2012:

Around the web

Hedge funds forgiven for slump as insurers shun low-yield bonds. (Bloomberg, via SFGate.com)

Small hedge funds draw investments as bigger rivals stumble. (Bloomberg)

Citigroup to let managers take stakes in its hedge funds as Volcker looms. (Bloomberg)

Lehman and its creditors seek to subpoena Geithner. (DealBook)

ECB is said to swap Greek bonds for new debt to avoid any enforced losses. (Bloomberg)

Oaktree Capital Management’s Howard Marks on running Penn’s endowment. (Zach Kouwe’s blog)

Raising the stakes in fund administration. (FTSE Global Markets)

Paulson’s math seen failing as Hartford Financial weighs breakup. (Bloomberg)

Falcone airwaves left with dwindling value after regulatory rejection. (Bloomberg)

Gold traders get more bullish as Paulson says ‘buy’. (Bloomberg)

U.S. regulator poised to soften derivatives curbs. (Financial Times)

Customer protections in light of the MF Global debacle. (Futures Magazine)

North Carolina pension manager eyeing bigger returns in hedge funds. (Charlotte (N.C.) Business Journal)

Close Wealth Management co-founder Elizabeth Carr-Stevens to launch wealth firm. (Citywire)

ESMA seeks views on technical rules for OTC derivatives in the E.U. (Bloomberg Businessweek)

LIBOR probe shines light on voice brokers. (Financial Times)

Credit Suisse hedge fund completes $2.6 billion fundraising. (HedgeCo.net)

Arbitrage managers look to generate positives out of negatives. (Investment Europe)

Average college endowment performance improves, and size matters. (All About Alpha)

Goldman Sachs PR chief Lucas van Praag’s accidental exit interview. (DealBook)

Teacher Retirement System of Texas takes stake in Bridgewater. (Deal Journal)

Starboard Value prepping for AOL board seat battle. (The New York Post)

TNT marks another success story for Jana Partners. (Deal Journal)