Category: World News (Page 1 of 2)

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Citadel’s Ken Griffin Says Retail Investors May Likely Ditch the Markets

Griffin expressed concern that losses sustained by younger investors who lost money due to FTX may make them less likely to invest their savings in capital markets, including traditional instruments like stocks and bonds.

“The confidence, though, of a generation in financial markets has also been shaken. That’s really awful because the 20-some-year-olds to 40-year-olds who are so engaged in crypto — they’ve got to save for their retirement, and if they don’t believe or trust in financial markets, this is a huge problem. They need to own stocks, they need to own corporate debt, they need to partake in our global capital markets,” Griffin said.

Citadel is currently partnering with Virtu, Schwab, Paradigm, Sequoia, and other Wall Street giants to form EDXM Crypto Exchange.

A cryptocurrency exchange that is supposed to provide transparency and lower transaction costs through the use of high liquidity and tight spreads.

But concerns are growing within the retail investor community as Citadel enters the crypto space, calling it an outrage due to the hedge funds’ long history of abuse of power.

“The bottom line is American investors have really gotten hurt here to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars in decline in market cap in crypto over the last two years. I mean that really strikes at the entire core essence of what investor protection is all about,” Griffin said.

Source: Fox Business.

Was The AMC FTX Token a Scam to Launder Money?

November 17, 2022 / FrankNez / 8 Comments

Sam Bankman-Fried | Crypto News: AMC FTX Token a scam?

There are no signs of AMC Entertainment signing an agreement to the AMC FTX Token listed on the FTX crypto exchange.

When viewing the terms of service and terms of the tokenized stock product (AMC), users are prompted to error pages.

The AMC FTX token is also showing as an ‘invalid symbol’ on the platform with no live chart as we’ve seen in the past.

The tokenized stock was trading at $4 (USD) but has lost all its value since the company collapsed and filed for bankruptcy.

Retail investors are digging deep and are concluding that the crypto exchange could have potentially been using these tokens to launder money.

The FTX scandal only goes deeper into the rabbit hole.

Let’s discuss what happened.

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FTX Scandal: What Went Wrong?

What happened to FTX? FTX Scandal — What happened to FTX? FTX scandal | Crypto News.

Cryptocurrency exchange FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on November 11, 2022, after the company’s valuation dropped from $32 billion to bankruptcy in only a matter of days.

The collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange dragged founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s $16 billion net worth to near-zero.

FTX was responsible for dropping the crypto industry below $1 trillion.

On November 16, a class-action lawsuit was filed in a Florida federal court, alleging that Sam Bankman-Fried created a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme designed to take advantage of unsophisticated investors from across the country.

Which celebrities were affected by FTX?

Steph Curry FTX promotion | Celebrities affected by FTX crypto scandal.

Celebrities named in the lawsuit include Steph Curry, Shaquille O’Neal, Shohei Ohtani, Naomi Osaka, Larry David, and Kevin O’Leary who allegedly helped Bankman-Fried promote the exchange.

FTX became one of the largest crypto exchanges in just three years with a valuation of $32 billion.

Bankman-Fried used aggressive marketing, including a Super Bowl ad campaign, and the purchase of naming rights to the home of the Miami Heat basketball team.

He became known for his political lobbying and donations as well as for working to support the cryptocurrency industry more broadly.

As values plunged in early 2022, he facilitated deals totaling about $1 billion to bail out cryptocurrency companies struggling as a result of the declines in token prices.

Conflict of Interest Created Mass Selloff in FTX

How did Binance play a role in FTX collapse? Binance FTX news.

FTX’s collapse took place over a 10-day period in Nov. 2022.

The catalyst for the crisis was a Nov. 2 scoop by CoinDesk that revealed that Alameda Research, the quant trading firm also run by Bankman-Fried, held a position worth $5 billion in FTT, the native token of FTX.

The report revealed that Alameda’s investment foundation was also in FTT, the token that its sister company had invented, not a fiat currency or other cryptocurrency.

That prompted concern across the cryptocurrency industry regarding SBF’s companies’ undisclosed leverage and possession of assets.

Here’s when things really started going downhill for FTX.

Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange, announced on Nov. 6 that it would sell its entire position in FTT tokens, roughly 23 million FTT tokens worth about $529 million.

Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said the decision to liquidate the exchange’s FTT position was based on risk management, following the collapse of the Terra (LUNA) crypto token earlier in 2022.

By the next day, FTX was experiencing a liquidity crisis.

Bankman-Fried attempted to reassure FTX investors that its assets were stable, but customers demanded withdrawals worth $6 billion in the days immediately following the CoinDesk report.

Bankman-Fried searched for additional money from venture capitalists before turning to Binance.

The value of FTT fell by 80% in two days.

Sources: Investopedia.

FTX: A Pyramid Scheme Created from Mass Marketing?

FTX Pyramid Scheme — Was FTX a pyramid scheme? Crypto news and more.

Within hours of filing for bankruptcy, FTX was hacked.

The exchange noted that ‘unauthorized transactions’ close to half a billion dollars in total were stollen from several wallets during a period of days.

Since the incident, regulators of the Bahamas have frozen FTX’s assets, and the company has strongly advised against customer deposits.

What’s occurred with FTX is an ongoing investigation and lawsuit against now ex-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.

So, was FTX just a scam to laundering money through the use of unauthorized stock tokens and covered by the hack that occurred?

Or was this just a poorly managed incident that occurred without motive?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

Citadel Has a Long History of Market Manipulation

September 13, 2022 / FrankNez

Citadel Market Manipulation — Market News: Citadel and friends are entering the crypto space | Ken Griffin.

Citadel and friends are entering the crypto world very soon.

EDX Markets plans to bring ‘traditional finance’ to the crypto space, a not so ‘traditional’ space to begin with.

The exchange made up of Citadel, Sequoia, Paradigm, Virtu, Charles Schwab, and Fidelity is debuting in November.

EDX Markets will start trading a limited number of spot, crypto tokens starting with a November trial period, with the official launch in January, per Bloomberg.

Similar to trading equities and options, EDX will allow investors to buy and sell digital assets through their existing broker dealer, rather than an outside venue or directly through a crypto-native exchange.

“We’re taking some of the best features of traditional finance and bringing it to the digital markets to make it more efficient, and bring that cost saving to investors,” Nazarali said.

Nazarali is the former global head of business development at Citadel Securities.

But as many are aware, these financial institutions have a long history of playing unfair.

Will these sharks taint the crypto space too?

Let’s look at Citadel’s market manipulation history.

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Citadel Market Manipulation

2015

In 2015, an account operated in China by the brokerage arm of US hedge fund Citadel was suspended.

It was the latest casualty of regulators’ hunt for market manipulators and short sellers at the time.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission said that the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges had suspended 24 accounts as part of a probe into high-frequency trading.

The investigation focused on a practice known as “spoofing” in which an investor submits a buy or sell order but then withdraws it before a sale is completed — a practice that can mislead investors by creating the false impression that a stock is trading at a particular price.

Citadel confirmed that one of its accounts managed by Guosen Futures was among those suspended.

2017

In 2017 Citadel paid the SEC $22.6 million to settle charges of misleading conduct.

The hedge fund misled customers about the way it priced trades.

The SEC found that between 2007 and 2010, Citadel used two algorithms to execute stock trades on customers’ behalf that gave investors a worse price for their trades, even when Citadel knew better prices existed elsewhere.

“This affected millions of retail orders,” said Stephanie Avakian, the acting director of enforcement at the SEC at the time.

Citadel neither admitted nor denied the findings.

2021

In 2021, Failure-to-Delivers (FTDs) rose dramatically in the period leading up to January 28th, 2021, a phenomenon consistent with increasing short interest by market makers such as Citadel Securities.

FTDs are indictive of naked short selling, which occurs when a short seller does not actually possess the security it is supposed to borrow.

This practice is largely inaccessible to individual investors but accessible to market makers.

At the time, Citadel, Robinhood, and others restricted retail investors from buying ‘meme stocks’ in order to prevent escalating institutional losses.

Citadel eventually lost billions after betting against AMC Entertainment in 2021.

But the entire system needs a refresh – The DTCC waived a total of $9.7 billion of collateral deposit requirements on January 28, 2021, saving brokers, and screwing up retail investors.

2022

The Chicago Tribune published a piece explaining exactly what retail investors have been warning the SEC about.

Citadel Securities’ dark pool dominates a big part of the financial world, accounting for as much as half of U.S. stock market activity.

The Chicago Tribune says this prominent dark pool is run by Chicago Billionaire Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities and has been targeting small scale retail investors.

And they’re not wrong.

Dark pools are typically involved in payment for order flow (PFOF), where they pay broker firms to receive retail order flow.

Brokers such as Robinhood and TD Ameritrade accept payment for order flow.

But retail investors have been bringing these nefarious practices in the market to light.

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Gary Gensler, Ken Griffin: Involved in Audit Quality Scheme?

July 27, 2022 / FrankNez

Market News: Center for Audit Quality (CAQ) conflicts of interest

Not only has Gary Gensler been complicit to ongoing manipulation in the market, but he seems to be part of a scheme that starts at the Center for Audit Quality (CAQ).

The conflict of interest is unreal when you have a big hedge fund owner and regulator in the same funding board, and a chief who either doesn’t get it or is part of this scheme.

Joe Ucuzoglu of the CAQ and Citadel’s Ken Griffin are part of the same funding organization, The Kennedy Center Corporate Fund Board.

The Corporate Fund Board is a nationwide partnership of distinguished business leaders (i.e., Ken Griffin) from prominent corporations (i.e., Citadel), helping mobilize corporate partners and secure critical funding.

Joe Ucuzoglu is the Chief Executive Officer at Deloitte US, leading the largest professional services organization in the United States.

According to the Center for Audit Quality (CAQ), Joe Ucuzoglu frequently speaks on a broad range of current issues facing the business community including the regulatory landscape.

You see the conflict of interest here?

What a mess.

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What is The Center for Audit Quality (CAQ)?

CAQ Center for Audit Quality — Center for Audit Quality Scheme | Gary Gensler speaking at CAQ

The CAQ is dedicated to enhancing investor confidence and public trust in the global capital markets by fostering high-quality performance by public company auditors.

The CAQ also convenes and collaborates with other stakeholders to advance the discussion of critical issues requiring action and intervention, and advocates policies and standards that promote public company auditors’ objectivity, effectiveness, and responsiveness to dynamic market conditions.

In simple terms, the CAQ works for the big guys to discuss critical issues they are undergoing and solve the problem(s) to fit their required market conditions.

The problem here is it leaves the retail investor out and caters to financial investors instead.

Tomorrow at 1pm ET, I’ll be speaking @TheCAQ’s commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

Register here: https://t.co/RWcUuxy7Cc
— Gary Gensler (@GaryGensler) July 26, 2022

Gary Gensler CAQ

SEC Chairman Gary Gensler is in charge of protecting retail investors but seems to be enamored by his title rather than the actual work it takes to tackle market injustices in a number of conflicts of interest.

CAQ CEO background

As CEO, Lindsay is responsible for carrying out the mission and vision of the CAQ’s Governing Board, which is comprised of CEOs from eight leading public company auditing firms, including Joe Ucuzoglu’s Delloitte US.

Julie Bell Lindsay served as a Managing Director and the Deputy Head of Global Regulatory Affairs at Citigroup, a bank who’s been fined several times for fraud in the past decade.

Julie joined Citi in February 2009 as General Counsel – Capital Markets and Corporate Reporting, where she was the lead lawyer responsible for Citi’s public disclosures and global capital markets activities.

Prior to Citi, Julie served as Counsel to Commissioner Cynthia Glassman at the US Securities and Exchange Commission, where she counseled the Commissioner on all matters relating to public company disclosure obligations, corporate governance standards, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and Financial Accounting Standards Board, enforcement matters, and issues affecting registered foreign companies.

The Center for Audit Quality sounds more so like a lobbyist group than anything else.

But I’m curious to hear your thoughts.

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JP Morgan Manipulated Gold to Keep Hedge Funds Happy

July 14, 2022 / FrankNez

An ex-trader says JP Morgan spoofed gold to keep hedge funds happy.

He says client orders made a lot of money for the bank.

Big hedge funds like Moore Capital Management and Tudor Capital Corp. were so important to JPMorgan Chase & Co. that its precious-metals traders routinely manipulated gold and silver markets to get the best prices on client orders, the former trader for the bank told a Chicago jury.

“They brought in a huge volume of trading, which made the bank a lot of money and our team a lot of money,” John Edmonds, a former trader on JPMorgan’s precious metals desk, said on Wednesday when asked about the incidents.

This isn’t the first time a bank colludes with hedge funds to cheat non-institutional investors from their money.

Here’s the latest market news.

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JP Morgan manipulates gold and silver market

Gold and Siver Market — Gold and Silver Market

Edmonds worked on the JP Morgan precious-metals desk for more than a decade and pleaded guilty in 2018 to conspiracy and commodities fraud related to “spoof” trading. – Bloomberg

Spoofing is a term used when traders place market orders and cancels them before the order is fulfilled, initiating fake orders into the market without the intent of paying them.

Earlier this year the DOJ targeted hedge fund Muddy Waters for flooding the market with fake orders.

John Edmunds is currently testifying against his former boss, Michael Nowak, the longtime head of the trading desk, gold trader Gregg Smith and hedge funds salesman Jeffrey Ruffo.

They’re accused of thousands “spoof” trades in which huge orders were placed and quickly canceled in the hope of moving prices up or down so they could complete desired trades.

Prosecutors allege the traders were influenced by the needs of hedge fund clients, whom at times were looking to buy or sell millions of dollars in gold or silver in a matter of seconds or minutes.

Edmonds said that when a client needed an order filled, everyone on the desk would stop trading so as not to “get in the way” of filing that order.

Edmonds said he’d regularly watch Nowak or Smith use spoof trades to fill those order, per Bloomberg.

Bank gets caught red-handed

Jurors were shown instant messages between Ruffo and traders at Moore Capital and Tudor, as well as Smith’s trading records around those communications as evidence of improper trading in gold and silver futures.

Edmonds, who sat near Ruffo and Smith, said the hedge fund clients were “price sensitive” and concerned about even small differences in prices of gold and silver given the massive size of their orders.

One example from prosecutors was an order on Dec. 12, 2011, by Moore Capital, which sought to sell 1 million ounces of silver at $31 an ounce.

Smith placed orders to buy 1,190 futures contracts, each for 5,000 ounces of silver, data presented to the jury showed.

Edmonds said that was consistent with a spoof trade designed to drive the price higher, where Smith wanted to sell.

Minutes later, Smith sold 200 contracts, which is the equivalent to 1 million ounces, and canceled his buy orders.

The jury also heard about a Jan. 18, 2012, gold trade on behalf of Tudor where Ruffo was asked to unload more than 900 contracts.

As the price of gold decreased around 8 a.m., Tudor’s James Phelan wrote to Ruffo, “tell Gregg to wake up,” according to a chat log.

Shortly thereafter, Smith started entering orders on the buy side. “He was trying to move the market higher so he can sell at a higher price for an important client,” Edmonds said.

Sources – Bloomberg.

Will JP Morgan face any consequences?

JP Morgan manipulated gold and silver market to keep hedge funds happy

The case is US v. Smith et al, 19-cr-00669, US District Court, Northern District of Illinois (Chicago).

For the reasons explained in this Opinion, the Defendants’ motion to dismiss, R. 114, is denied except for the bank fraud counts (Counts 5–7).

Those counts are dismissed.

The remainder of the Superseding Indictment survives.

You can view the entire case text, opinion, and details here.

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Related: Chicago Tribune Says Citadel Securities' Dark Pool Targets Small Investors

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SEC Delays Audit Reform That Would Protect Investors To 2024

July 13, 2022 / FrankNez

The SEC has delayed an audit reform that would protect retail investors from nefarious practices in the market to 2024.

Opponents, including SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce want to scrap the entire project.

Hester Peirce is tied to a lobbyist group of anti-regulators.

Quite a contradiction being an SEC Commissioner if you ask me.

Keep reading below to find out how delaying this audit reform is a direct violation of retail investors’ rights.

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Consolidated Audit Trail of 2016

SEC News: SEC Delays market reform until 2024 — SEC News: SEC delays market reform until 2024

In 2016, the SEC approved a rule to establish the Consolidated Audit Trail, which would capture data on customers and orders for exchange-listed equities and over-the-counter (OTC) securities across all U.S. markets.

The system would provide the SEC with an enormous database of information to help the agency detect and quickly react to events that disrupt the markets and could potentially harm retail investors.

Brokerages were supposed to begin collecting customer information for the CAT this month but in May, Finra delayed implementation of the CAT customer and account information system until the end of this year.

However, in an order on Friday, the SEC pushed back implementation of some SRO reporting obligations until July 2024.

“The CAT, a project designed to give the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulators comprehensive market insight, has proved much harder and more expensive to implement than anyone anticipated,” SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce said in a statement.

“I have grave concerns about the whole project. The dollars, distraction, dissension, and drain of endless meetings over the past several years of CAT implementation are reasons enough to reconsider the entire project; the risks to liberty and security posed by the project should compel us to do so.” – Investment News

OTC trading goes unregulated until 2024

Over-the-counter trading has been a real issue in our markets.

It’s allowed financial institutions to trade retail’s orders outside the lit exchange (NYSE), making it susceptible to market manipulation.

These markets are unregulated which leads to less public information and the possibility of fraud.

Delaying this market reform means the SEC is pushing a decade of complacency since the reform’s introduction in 2016.

Something the SEC is very good at.

The question is, how long does the SEC think they can continue to delay market reforms before investors take matters into their own hands, and into the streets again.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

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Goldman Sachs’ Dark Pools Are Under Federal Investigation

May 6, 2022 / FrankNez

Goldman Sachs dark pool under investigation — BREAKING: Goldman Sachs dark pool is under investigation

Goldman Sach’s dark pools are under investigation according to an SEC report.

The SEC published a report highlighting what essentially seems to be a deep audit.

This is not the first time Goldman Sachs has been fined or investigated for abusing its power.

Dark pools played a massive part in the recession of 2008, but dark pools were never banned.

Will something finally be done about it this time around?

In this article I’m going to break down everything they’re looking into, starting with Goldman Sachs’ dark pools.

Let’s break it down together.

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View the SEC report here.

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Feds crack down on Goldman Sachs dark pools

The fed is looking into various matters relating to Goldman Sachs’ businesses and operations.

One of which stands out to retail investors as being its dark pools.

The fed is investigating the supervision and controls relating to Goldman’s high frequency trading (HFTs) and its alternative trading systems (ATSs), also known as dark pools.

Dark Pools (also benignly called Alternative Trading Systems or ATS) are effectively unregulated stock exchanges being run by the same megabanks on Wall Street that blew up the U.S. financial system in 2008 and received the largest taxpayer bailout in U.S. history. – Wall Street On Parade.

The name of Goldman Sachs’ Dark Pool that trades in the U.S. is called Sigma X2.

It used to be called simply Sigma X.

According to a publicly-available document, Sigma X is now used by Goldman Sachs to designate the Dark Pools it operates in foreign jurisdictions, which include Europe, Japan, Hong Kong and Australia.

Dark pools are the gateway that allow financial institutions to manipulate the stock market without any regulation.

Now the fed is cracking down on Goldman Sachs and it comes as no surprise since the bank has been criminally charged on many occasions before.

In October of 2020, Goldman Sachs admitted to the charges of a bribery scandal where they were fined $2.9 billion.

Other operations being looked into

The fed is looking into the institution’s advisory services and conflicts of interest.

They are also tackling the following:

Research practices, including research independence and interactions between research analysts and other firm personnel, including investment banking personnel, as well as third parties.
Transactions involving government-related financings and other matters.
The offering, auction, sales, trading and clearance of corporate and government securities, currencies, commodities and other financial products and related sales and other communications and activities.
As well as the firm’s supervision and controls relating to such activities, including compliance with applicable short sale rules, algorithmic, high-frequency and quantitative trading, the firm’s U.S. alternative trading system (dark pool), futures trading, options trading.
And finally, insider trading.

The SEC said in past years they were tackling dark pools but failed to competently execute the plan.

The issue was brought to the light by the ‘meme stock’ crowd who also exposed naked short selling and received attention by mainstream media.

Dark pools have been able to suppress stock prices across the market from reaching full demand potential.

Gary Gensler said 90%-95% of retails orders do not get processed through the lit exchange (NYSE) but rather through these dark pools.

Goldman Sachs and others have essentially stolen from retail investors as only 5%-10% of retails money actually creates demand for a stock.

For every dollar retail puts in the market, only this small percentage is reflected on a security.

That’s what happens when financial institutions like Goldman Sachs redirects orders through its dark pools.

This is a developing story.

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Related: Here's Why It's Taking AMC So Long to Skyrocket

Hedge Fund Co-Founder Sentenced to Prison Avoids Jail Time

April 26, 2022 / FrankNez

hedge fund avoids jail time — Corruption: Hedge fund avoids jail time – pleads guilty of fraud

(Bloomberg) The co-founder of Premium Point Investments and a former trader pleaded guilty to charges they overstated asset values at the now-defunct hedge fund, but they won’t serve any time behind bars.

Anilesh Ahuja, the fund’s co-founder, and trader Jeremy Shor were found guilty of conspiring to overvalue the hedge fund’s assets by more than $100 million and sentenced to prison in 2019.

However, U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla in Manhattan overturned their convictions in December due to errors and misleading statements by prosecutors.

The pair had faced a new trial but reached a deal with the government allowing them to plead guilty to a single securities fraud count.

Under the deal, which was approved by Failla in a hearing on Friday, the two men won’t serve any prison time, pay a fine or serve probation.

Let’s talk about it.

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Hedge Fund gets away with prison time and fees

hedge fund pledges guilty and gets away with prison time

Before their convictions were overturned, Ahuja was sentenced to more than four years in prison and Shor, almost 3.5.

But their surrender dates were delayed, initially due to the Covid pandemic and later because the judge was considering throwing out the verdict.

As a result, neither man served any part of his sentence.

“We are pleased that Mr. Ahuja can finally put this ordeal behind him without having to spend a day in jail,” his lawyers, Richard Tarlowe and Roberto Finzi, said in a statement.

“After years of litigation, we are pleased to put this matter behind us with no additional punishment beyond the punishment already inflicted by the process,” Shor’s lawyer, Justin Weddle, said in an email.

Federal prosecutor Daniel Gitner defended the deal before the judge on Friday, saying Ahuja and Shor had already made “substantial restitution” to investors.

“Today’s guilty pleas to securities fraud bring to a close the defendants’ scheme to mismark their funds’ books,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement.

“This office stands by this prosecution, and is pleased that this matter has resolved with the defendants’ acceptance of responsibility.”

“Unacceptable errors”

Hedge fund avoids jail time after being sentences to prison – hedge fund pledges guilty

“I tried my hardest to conduct a fair trial,” Failla said in overturning the verdict.

“I no longer have confidence in the fairness of the trial.”

She declined to dismiss the charges against Ahuja and Shor though, saying that the errors made by the government — while “unacceptable” — were not severe enough to warrant throwing out the case.

Ahuja was a senior mortgage bond trader at Lehman Brothers, RBS Greenwich Capital and Deutsche Bank AG for four years before co-founding Premium Point in 2008.

The firm initially focused on the U.S. residential loan market and began amassing bonds backed by distressed assets in the wake of the global financial crisis.

It later expanded into the jumbo loan and home rental businesses and managed about $2 billion of assets at its peak.

Premium Point began winding down in late 2016 after posting large losses.

The fund revealed the following year that federal securities regulators were examining the way it valued its assets.

Its mortgage credit funds filed for bankruptcy protection in March 2018, and Ahuja, Majidi and Shor were charged two months later.

Former Chief Risk Officer Ashish Dole also pleaded guilty and testified for the prosecution at the trial.

The case is U.S. v. Ahuja, 18-cr-00328, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan), via Bloomberg.

Should hedge funds be allowed to get away with fraud?

It’s curious how these hedge fund co-founders were sentenced to prison but managed to get away with jail time.

What does this tell us about our system?

Why do you think this happened?

Was the government paid out?

I’m interested to know what you think; leave a comment below.

[Sources]

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Tiger Global Hedge Fund Sinks a Massive 34% This Year

April 3, 2022 / FrankNez

Tiger Global Hedge Fund Sings 34% — From left, Chase Coleman III, Scott Shleifer, and John Curtius. Photos by Bloomberg. Art by Mike Sullivan, Edited by Frank Nez

Tiger Global has an AUM of $95 billion, that’s $57 billion more than Citadel’s AUM of approximately $38 billion.

The monster hedge fund is managed by Chase Coleman, 46, who was up until now considered to be a hedge fund legend.

Tiger Global Management had a rough 2021 according to sources and losses are piling up in 2022.

Hedge funds seem to be in a lot of distress recently.

Let’s break it down together.

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Hedge funds face turbulence in 2022

This year we’ve seen many hedge funds face massive adversity.

Hedge funds have been dealing with significant losses this year, probes from the DOJ, and scrutiny from retail investors.

Hedge fund managers once deemed leaders in their industry now have their reputation on the line.

Gabe Plotkin was named a great trader by Citadel’s Ken Griffin although the hedge fund had to bail Melvin Capital out due to the ‘meme stock’ frenzy.

Citadel pulled $2 billion from Melvin Capital in recent months.

Chase Coleman is in a sticky situation too.

Tiger Global Management is down 34% this year through March.

The speed of the reversal has shocked just about everyone, considering that Coleman is celebrated as one of his generation’s brightest stars, a standout among the elite money managers mentored by the famed Julian Robertson, Bloomberg.

Tiger Global Management treads rocky waters

The bad run has been fueled by massive bets on stocks that have been hammered, such as fast-growing tech companies in the U.S and China.

Tiger Global hedge fund lost 7% last year, its first annual drop since 2016 and its third total, according to Bloomberg.

Tiger Global told clients in a letter that it’s opening up both its hedge and long funds to a limited amount of capital from existing investors to bolster positions in stocks that underperformed

However, we see the results in the first quarter of 2022 has not been what the hedge fund anticipated.

Built by Coleman and his partner Scott Shleifer, Tiger Global has long been seen as a throwback to the industry’s glory years, when double-digit returns were the norm and ‘hotshot managers’ unerringly backed winning companies and shorted the losers.

Across the firm’s $35 billion in funds focused on public companies, this year’s losses have triggered a more than $10 billion hit to investors that include foundations, endowments and pension funds, as well as Tiger Global insiders.

Coleman’s personal wealth has dropped by $1.3 billion, according to calculations by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Coleman’s hedge fund headed towards worst year

Tiger Global hedge fund may be on track for one of its worst years yet.

The blue in this chart indicates the hedge fund’s losses in 2008, 2016, 2021, and 2022.

The firm’s first serious bump was during the 2008 financial crisis, when it lost 26%, followed by a 1% gain the next year.

While markets were already jittery this year due to high inflation and expectations of rate hikes, Russia’s war against Ukraine triggered a flight from risk.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict has affected every corner of the financial sector.

Earlier we saw Citadel and other hedge funds faced default on Russian bonds from tech company Yandex.

But Tiger Global Management isn’t the only hedge fund struggling.

Investors are pulling out $250 million from Coatue Management and the hedge fund cannot meet its investors demands.

We’re beginning to see this domino effect of losses begin to catch up to even the biggest hedge funds in the world.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

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More Than 100 Hedge Funds Stranded in Cayman Islands

April 1, 2022 / FrankNez

(Bloomberg) Sanctions against Russian Billionaire have left more than 100 hedge funds and private equity firms’ money stranded in the Cayman Islands.

Concord Management has $6 billion at its disposal, most of which pertains to Oligarch Abramovich.

The firm is said to have handed out checks of millions of dollars to more than 100 hedge funds.

Now these hedge funds have a collected amount of $6 billion stranded in the Cayman Islands.

I’ll get to the names of some of the biggest hedge funds below.

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Firms trapped with Russian cash

Bloomberg’s Anna Edwards says sanctions prohibit hedge funds from getting rid of tainted money.

The restrictions also put a hold on the collection of fees.

The Russian-Ukraine war has made it impossible for Russian oligarchs to accept new cash or redeem their stakes.

More than 100 hedge funds are caught up in sanctions trapped with Russian cash according to Bloomberg sources.

Firms with Abramovich’s money can continue to manage it, but what they can’t do is redeem the oligarch’s stake, accept new cash from him or allow him to sell his shares to another investor, according to Cayman Island rules, where many of the funds have offshore entities.

If a firm owns the billionaire money due to the sale of an asset, the proceeds must go into a blocked account.

Firms can also charge fees but cannot collect them until restrictions are lifted.

Millennium Management and other big hedge funds have been affected

Michael Matlin, who founded Concord in 1999, mostly steered money to the biggest and best-known funds.

Over more than two decades, Brevan Howard Asset Management, Millennium Management, Carlyle Group Inc., D.E. Shaw & Co., Sculptor Capital Management Inc. and Apollo Global Management Inc. — as well as smaller firms including Sarissa Capital Management and Ratan Capital Management.

Some of you might recognize Millennium Management from the list of top 10 financial institutions shorting AMC stock.

Sculptor is one of the hedge funds along with Citadel who are facing potential default on Russian bonds.

This SEC report also shows Citadel has funds in the Cayman Islands while this SG 13 form shows the relationship to Concord.

Representatives from the firms declined to comment on the matter.

Russian sanctions cripple Abramovich

Abramovich, 55, with a net worth of $13.7 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, amassed his fortune from the sale of privatized assets acquired from the former Soviet Union, including oil giant Sibneft and Aeroflot.

He sold his aluminum assets to fellow oligarch Oleg Deripaska, but retains stakes in companies including Russian steelmaker Evraz.

He’s been reinvesting the proceeds in trophy assets for two decades, including purchasing Chelsea Football Club, London properties and private jets.

He’s being forced to sell Chelsea and has moved his superyachts to Turkey out of the reach of European sanctions.

CNN says Citadel’s Ken Griffin is joining the Ricketts family, the owners of Major League Baseball’s Chicago Cubs, in a formal bid for Chelsea Football Club.

Interesting.

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