Archive for January, 2010


Page 2 of 3123

AlphaClone News

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

Some interesting news out of AlphaClone.

Press release here.

Over 70% of AlphaClone’s Smart Money Simulations Outperformed the S&P 500 Index

SAN FRANCISCO, CA–(Marketwire – January 19, 2010) – AlphaClone LLC, today announced 2009 performance results for its simulated hedge fund clone portfolios. For the year ending December 31, 2009, over 70% of AlphaClone’s 3,100 clone portfolios beat the S&P 500 market index, with over half outperforming by 10 percentage points or more.

Leveraging the publicly disclosed stock picks of the world’s top hedge fund managers, AlphaClone created a series of “clones,” passive investment strategies that seek to systematically capture alpha typically only available to high-net worth investors.

These cloning strategies performed particularly well in 2009 compared to the US market, as represented by the S&P 500. The following table lists the year’s best-performing “single fund clones” based on a Top 20 Holdings strategy. Topping the list was the Eagle Value Partners clone, which garnered an impressive total return of 220.8% for the year compared to 26.5% for the S&P 500 Index.

AlphaClone — 2009′s Best-Performing Single Fund Clones — Top 20 Holdings Strategy

                                               Total
Rank  Fund                                    Return
1     Eagle Value Partners (Witmer)            220.8%
2     Pabrai Mohnish                           171.0%
3     Silver Point Capital                     167.3%
4     Tracer Capital Management                125.9%
5     Pershing Square Capital Management       123.7%
6     Elliott Management                       122.9%
7     Pamet Capital Management                 121.7%
8     Greywolf Capital Management              120.9%
9     Artis Capital Management                 118.2%
10    Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors          116.7%

AlphaClone follows the investments of over 280 firms, including legendary fund managers such as Warren Buffett, Seth Klarman, John Paulson, David Einhorn, David Tepper, and George Soros.

To create more diversified strategies, AlphaClone also tracks groups of fund managers and aggregates their stock ideas into investable clones. For example, AlphaClone makes it possible to follow the most popular investments of twenty “Tiger Cub” fund managers, protégés of legendary Tiger Management investor Julian Robertson. AlphaClone clients that invested in the Tiger Cubs Top 10 Popularity Clone enjoyed returns of over 59% in 2009.

“We’re thrilled with the outstanding performance of our clone portfolios since we launched a year ago,” said Mazin Jadallah, founder and CEO of AlphaClone. “Today’s investors are savvy but have very limited access to the world’s top hedge funds. With AlphaClone, investors can extract value from the collective intelligence of the world’s best stock pickers and put that value to work in their own investment accounts.”

AlphaClone’s subscription-based research solution is a fraction of the cost of traditional hedge funds and offers better transparency, liquidity, and tax management. The research service includes an intuitive online strategy simulation tool that enables investors to explore and customize smart money portfolios that fit their needs. Investors can access current stock picks and backtest portfolios with ten years of historical market data. For more information visit http://www.alphaclone.com.

About AlphaClone LLC

AlphaClone is the first professional grade web-based equity research service that lets investors find, backtest and track the stock ideas of top money managers. Through a process called “cloning,” AlphaClone simulates investing in smart money stock ideas at the time they are made public. Easy-to-use, powerful and flexible, AlphaClone is designed for both individual and professional investors who want to know what the smart money is doing and more importantly how they can benefit from that knowledge. Based in San Francisco, AlphaClone was founded by Mazin Jadallah, Mebane Faber, and Jason Jones.

Fat Tails

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

Nice paper – Non-Normality of Market Returns (link fixed)

While I think this is well established, was worth reading nonetheless.

Investor Delusion….

Monday, January 18th, 2010

….knows no bounds.

—-

Marshall Wace launching hedge ETF….in London…US still 14 years behind.

Links

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

Holy Cow I need to take a sabbatical next week!

—-

Google talks about pulling out of China for free speech reasons, but decides to continue to run penny stock and investing scams ads in the US.  I guess “Do no evil” doesn’t apply to the high paying AdSense campaigns from the scammers?  Embarrassing.

—-

Really interesting interview with Fama in New Yorker and another interview with Justin Fox.

—-

Both Carney and Althucher are talking about how you can’t invest like Buffett, and I agree, but I think they’re asking the wrong question.  The right question is, can I invest alongside Buffett and take advantage of his stock picking skills.  I think the answer is yes.

Sunday Coffee

Sunday, January 10th, 2010

Two things I’m thinking about today:

1.  Payments for bone marrow and organ donation.  Two articles here and here in the WSJ.

2.  Has there been a large study that examines the immune genes and their ability to predict relationship success (as determined by marriage length, fidelity, etc)?

I’ve read most of the papers here and here and have a few emails out to the professors.  Its seems like it would have some pretty enormous consequences, no?

Short Lending

Saturday, January 9th, 2010

Why use any index fund company than Vanguard?

Traveling

Friday, January 8th, 2010

Las Vegas (today)

Germany & Austria Feb 13th-21st

Traveling

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

Phoenix today through Friday.  Drop me a line if you’re around.

Cribbing From the Best

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

There is a nice article in the recent Kiplinger’s written by Whitney Tilson and John Heins (not linkable yet).  It mentions how they track 30 top hedge funds & Buffett through 13F filings.  It is interesting to note that they mention both JP Morgan (JPM) and Monsanto (MON) in the article, two stocks that are in the AlphaClone World Beta clone portfolio that did over 50% in 2009.

Great quote from the article from Bruce Berkowitz, “Why wouldn’t you look at what other great investors have found?”

Couldn’t agree more!

(Disclosure: long both those stocks.)

Genetic Love, Investor Fail, and Who is the Biggest Hedge Fund Incubator?

Monday, January 4th, 2010

About a year and half ago I wrote an article on mate compatibility.  (Long time blog readers recall that I was a genetics/gene therapy student in a former life…)  There was one company attempting to match partners based on the findings (Scientific Match, lifetime membership $2,000), but I saw the real killer app as offering the test separately to couples and especially would be couples.  A new Swiss-based website is offering it now for $100 – GenePartners.  Unfortunately the test specifics and algorithms are not public.

Anyone tried it?

Reminds me of my favorite bionerd joke :”If I were an enzyme I would be DNA helicase so I could unzip your genes.”

—-

Here is a link to our monthly newsletter with timing updates – if you want to receive it on email sign up to the right.

—-

Everytime I visit the Big Picture (Boston) I want to buy a SLR.

—-

I wrote about this awhile back, nice follow up on how investors consistently buy high, then sell much, much lower.  Happens over, and over, and over again.

—-

Vimeo’s top 25 videos of the year.

—-

Seriously, who has spawned the most AUM?

I think this would be a fun topic for a book….Tigers vs. Turtles vs. Commodities Corp vs. Rubin’s Desk vs. Soros (any big ones I’m missing?)

TIGER CUBS Fund
Barry Bausano Argonaut
David Gerstenhaber Argonaut
Paul Spieldenner Bamboo Capital
John Griffin Blue Ridge Capital
Lawrence Bowman Bowman Capital
Robert Ellis Catequil
Quinn Riordan Elmwood Advisors
Kevin Kenny Emerging Sovereign
Michael Derchin JetCap
bob Carr JoHo
David Saunders K2
Mark Bader KiCap
Patrick Earle KiCap
Kris Kristynik KiCap
Steven Mandel Lone Pine Capital
Lee Ainslie Maverick Capital
James Lyle Millbank
Bjorn Rise Oceanic Energ
Dwight Anderson Ospraie Capital
Dan Morehead Pantera
Tom Brown Second Curve Capital
Bill Hwang Tiger Asia
Patrick McCormack Tiger Consumer
Chase Coleman Tiger Technology
Tom Facciola TigerShark
John de la Hey Toscafund
Martin Hughes Toscafund
Paul Touradji Touradji Capital
Andreas Halvorsen Viking Global
Brian Olson Viking Global
David Ott Viking Global
David Morrison
SOROS Fund
Scott Bessent Bessent Cap
robert Raiff Centurion
Arnie Snider Deerfield
Sheldon Kasowitz Indus
David Kowitz Indus
Michael Karsh Karsh
Walter Burlock Origin Investment
Gabe Nechamkin Satellite
Lief Rosenblatt Satellite
Stanley Drunkenmiller Duquesne
GS Rubin Desk Fund
Edwawrd Lampert ESL
Eric Mindich Eton Park
Thomas Steyer Farallon
Daniel Och Och-Ziff
Richard Perry Perry
COMMODITES CORPORTATION Fund
Bruce Kovner Caxton
Louis Bacon Moore
Paul Tudor Jones Tudor
Ed Seykota,
Michael Marcus
Jack D. Schwager Fortune
Peter Brandt
TURTLES Fund
Jerry Parker Chesapeake Capital
Liz Cheval EMC Capital
Curtis Faith Former Trading Blox
Tom Shanks Hawksbill Capital
Jim DiMaria JPD
Mark Walsh Mark J. Walsh Co.
Paul Rabar Rabar Market Research
Howard Seidler Saxon Investment
Page 2 of 3123
 
Web Statistics