Robin Hood Investors Conference 2014: Summary of Stock Picks

The 2014 Robin Hood Conference took place over the past two days in New York where hedge fund managers presented their latest investment ideas to benefit the Robin Hood Foundation which fights poverty.  Julia La Roche of Business Insider tweeted tidbits from the event and here's an aggregation of them all.


Stock Picks From Robin Hood Investors Conference 2014


David Einhorn (Greenlight Capital): long SunEdison (SUNE), Greek banks like Alpha and Piraeus (via warrants).  Short French debt.

David Tepper (Appaloosa Management): short the Euro.

Larry Robbins (Glenview Capital): long Community Health (CYH), Realogy (RLGY), VCA (WOOF), Fidelity National Financial (FNF)

Dan Loeb (Third Point): long Amgen (AMGN) and has talked to management

Paul Tudor Jones (Tudor Investment Corp): Thinks commodities will be a mess until 2020, likes US stocks.

Jim Chanos (Kynikos Associates): Short Petrobras

Scott Ferguson (Sachem Head): Long Comcast (CMCSA).  He previously worked at Ackman's Pershing Square.

Keith Meister (Corvex Capital): Long Crown Castle International (CCI), also long Allergan (AGN).

Zach Schreiber (PointState Capital): ex-Duquesne guy, used to work with Stan Druckenmiller.  Long Cheniere Energy (LNG).

Nehal Chopra (Tiger Ratan Capital): long Charter Communications (CHTR)

Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures): Venture Capital, not equities but insinuated he'd be short Netflix (NFLX), Amazon (AMZN), and eBay (EBAY).

Tom Wagner (Knighthead Capital): long American Airlines (AAL)

Matthew Sidman (Three Bays Capital): long Churchill Downs (CHDN)

Ricky Sandler (Eminence Capital): long Telefonica Brasil (VIV) and eBay (EBAY)

Traci Lerner (Chesapeake Partners): long American Airlines (AAL), Gencorp (GY) and Eagle Materials (EXP)

Whitney Tilson (Kase Capital): long Sodastream (SODA) and Micron (MU).  Short Lumber Liquidators (LL) and Exact Sciences (EXAS)

Ivy Zelman (Zelman Associates): long homebuilders, Lennar (LEN), Pulte (PHM), Toll (TOL), as well as Fortune Home & Security (FBHS) and Mohawk (MHK).

Bill Eigen (JPMorgan): Short bonds to play volatility

Nathaniel August (Mangrove Partners): Short Worldwide Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), long Fortress Investment Group (FIG)

Oleg Nodelman (EcoR1 Capital): long Clovis (CLVS)

Amish Mehta (SQN Investors): long Blucora (BCOR)

Hedge Fund Tracking: David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital - 13F Filing Q3 2008

Next up, we have David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital. This is the 3rd Quarter 2008 edition of our ongoing hedge fund tracking series. Before reading this update, make sure you check out the preface to the series we're doing on Hedge Fund 13F's here. We've already covered Timothy Barakett's Atticus Capital,Whitney Tilson's T2 Partners, Peter Thiel's Clarium Capital, Bill Ackman's Pershing Square, Bret Barakett's Tremblant Capital, and John Paulson's Paulson & Co. Greenlight is a $6 billion fund ran by David Einhorn and has seen annual returns of over 25%. Greenlight specializes in spin-offs and value investing. Einhorn's name has been popping up in the media a lot over the past year, as he talked about his well documented short position in Lehman Brothers (LEH). And, while that position paid off handsomely for him, it barely offset losses he experienced from other positions. Einhorn was -13% for October and is now -26% year-to-date, as noted in our October hedge fund performance numbers post. Einhorn has also recently detailed the saga between his fund and Allied Capital, a company he shorted, in his book Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: A Long Short Story. It gives you an inside perspective as to how Greenlight constructs and researches their investment theses and we highly recommend it.

We track David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital due to their value investing orientation. Greenlight's approach is slightly different than some of the 'Tiger Cub' progeny funds we track. Although both are value oriented, Greenlight approaches things slightly differently by identifying mispricings in the markets and going from there. We've already covered a few other 'Tiger Cub' portfolios in our hedge fund tracking series, including Stephen Mandel's Lone Pine Capital, Lee Ainslie's Maverick Capital, and John Griffin's Blue Ridge Capital, and Andreas Halvorsen's Viking Global. We've tracked those and many other funds' performance in our October hedge fund performance. You can also check out Greenlight's 2nd quarter portfolio update here.

The following were Greenlight's long equity, note, and options holdings as of September 30th, 2008 as filed with the SEC.


New Positions (Brand new positions that they initiated in the last quarter):
EMC Corp (EMC)
Kinross Gold (KGC)
Mercer International (MERC) 8.5% Note
TicketMaster (TKTM)
Pomeroy IT (PMRY)


Added to (Positions they already owned but added shares to)
Republic Airways (RJET): Increased position by 80%
Dr Pepper Snapple (DPS): Increased position by 30%
Helix Energy (HLX): Increased position by 30%
Echostar (SATS): Increased position by 9%
Teradata (TDC): Increased position by 4%


Some Reduced Positions (Positions they sold some shares of - note not all sales listed)
Ameriprise Financial (AMP): Decreased position by 83%
MDC Holdings (MDC): Decreased position by 82%
Target (TGT): Decreased position by 49%
Mercer International (MERC): Decreased position by 43%
Guaranty Financial (GFG): Decreased position by 14%


Removed Positions (Positions they sold out of completely)
Microsoft (MSFT)
HSBC (HBC) Puts
Patriot Coal (PCX)
Covidien (COV)
Walgreens (WAG)
Wellpoint (WLP)
UnitedHealth (UNH)
Lehman Bros (LEHMQ) Puts
Verasun Energy (VSUNQ)
Tyco (TEL)
Sears (SHLD)


Top 20 Holdings (by % of portfolio)

1. Dr Pepper Snapple (DPS): 17.5% of portfolio
2. Helix Energy (HLX): 15% of portfolio
3. Target (TGT): 12% of portfolio
4. Einstein Noah (BAGL): 7.5% of portfolio
5. MI Developments (MIM): 6.5% of portfolio
6. Health Management (HMA): 6.4% of portfolio
7. URS Corp (URS): 6.4% of portfolio
8. Teradata (TDC): 5% of portfolio
9. Echostar (SATS): 3.5% of portfolio
10. Ameriprise (AMP): 2.9% of portfolio
11. Employers Holdings (EIG): 2.8% of portfolio
12. MDC Holdings (MDC): 2% of portfolio
13. Fifth Street Finance (FSC): 1.6% of portfolio
14. EMC (EMC): 1.5% of portfolio
15. Triple S Mgmt (GTS): 1.3% of portfolio
16. Kinross Gold (KGC): 1.3% of portfolio
17. Republic Airways (RJET): 1.2% of portfolio
18. Dana Holding (DAN): 1.2% of portfolio
19. Mercer International (MERC) 8.5% Note: 0.8% of portfolio
20. Guaranty Financial (GFG): 0.7% of portfolio

Assets from the collective holdings above were $2.7 billion last quarter and were $1.4 billion this quarter. Interesting to note that Greenlight is yet another fund we've seen sell out of Sears (SHLD). Bill Ackman's Pershing Square recently sold practically all of their SHLD. Additionally, Greenlight is now the second value oriented fund we've seen in Teradata (TDC). Stephen Mandel's Lone Pine has a sizable position in TDC as well. Please note that we have not detailed every single change to every single position in this update, but we have covered all the major moves. Also, keep in mind that these filings only include long equity, notes, and options holdings and do not reflect the cash or short portions of their portfolio. This is just one of many funds in our hedge fund tracking series in which we're tracking 35+ prominent funds. We've already covered Whitney Tilson's T2 Partners, Peter Thiel's Clarium Capital, Bill Ackman's Pershing Square, Stephen Mandel's Lone Pine Capital, Lee Ainslie's Maverick Capital, Timothy Barakett's Atticus Capital, John Griffin's Blue Ridge Capital, Bret Barakett's Tremblant Capital, Andreas Halvorsen's Viking Global, and John Paulson's Paulson & Co. Overall, its been one of the worst years ever for hedge funds, as we noted in our recent October hedge fund performance update. Thus, the recent moves they've made in their portfolios become all the more interesting given the way the market has played out.

More on Einhorn & Greenlight:
- Greenlight's 2nd quarter portfolio update
- October hedge fund performance update
- Hedge Fund Rankings

Investor Letters

Here are some more recent hedge fund investor letters. Do note that these are all .pdf files.

Maverick Capital (Lee Ainslie) - Portfolio holdings detailed here.

Colony Capital

Oaktree Capital Management

Hayman Advisors LP (Kyle Bass)

Balyasny Asset Management LP

Baupost Group (Seth Klarman)

Perry Capital

And, taken from Bloomberg, we're seeing that a few hedge funds that have typically been closed have since re-opened those funds to add capital,

"Steven Cohen, David Einhorn, Paul Singer, and Alan Howard are doing what most hedge-fund managers can't these days -- raising money from investors.

Singer's Elliott Management Corp. added $3 billion in the third quarter and Howard's Brevan Howard Asset Management LLP garnered new cash as they posted investment gains in a year when the average fund has lost 20 percent, people with knowledge of matter said. Cohen's SAC Capital Advisors LLC and Einhorn's Greenlight Capital Inc. have allowed investors into funds that had been closed since 2005, with Einhorn seeking several hundred million dollars this month."

Both SAC and Greenlight have suffered losses this year, as we detailed in our hedge fund performance update.

Checking In On David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital

I like to track a variety of hedge funds with different strategies just to see what everyone is up to each quarter. And, while I don't necessarily go in-depth on each fund, I do like to monitor major changes to their portfolios. One main activist fund I follow is Greenlight Capital. Greenlight is a $6 billion fund ran by David Einhorn and has had an annual return of over 25%. Greenlight specializes in spin-offs and value investing. Einhorn's name has been popping up in the media a lot in recent months as he talked about his well documented short position in Lehman Brothers (LEH).

So, after comparing his most recent 13F filing with the one from last quarter, we can see a few major moves that Einhorn has made with Greenlight's portfolio. Please note that this is by no means a complete summary of changes. I am simply pointing out a few changes of interest.

New Positions:
UnitedHealth Group (UNH)
Dr. Pepper Snapple (DPS) - a spinoff from Cadbury
Teradata (TDC)

Added to:
Helix Energy (HLX) - increased position by 12%

Reduced Positions:
Microsoft (MSFT) - reduced position by 33.1%
Target (TGT) - reduced position by 16.6%

Removed Positions (positions Greenlight sold completely out of):
Discover Financial (DFS)

Some of Greenlight's Top Holdings (in no particular order) include: Ameriprise Financial (AMP), Helix Energy (HLX), Microsoft (MSFT), Target (TGT), Health Management Associates (HMA), and M.D.C. Holdings (MDC).

Again, please note that this is merely the highlights of their portfolio and does not detail all of the changes made. If you're interested in more in-depth analysis of some hedge fund portfolios, check out some of the write-ups I've done on the blog (Blue Ridge Capital, Lone Pine Capital, & many more). And, you can view their Greenlight's recent 13F as filed with the SEC here.

Also, I wanted to point out that David Einhorn has a recent book out, Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: A Long Short Story. In it, he details the saga between his hedge fund (Greenlight Capital) and a company he shorted (private financer Allied Capital). I'm currently reading the book and will be posting a review of it on this blog once I finish. So far, it's a good read. It gives you an inside perspective as to how Greenlight goes about constructing and researching their investment theses. Check it out if you're interested.