market folly

Yep, it's thaaaaaaat time again. Buckle up for a whirlwind of first quarter 2009 hedge fund portfolios. This post is the preface to the series we will be doing in the coming weeks that details what many prominent hedge funds have been up to in the prior quarter.

Four times a year (once each quarter), hedge funds & asset managers with greater than $100 million AUM (assets under management) are required to report to the SEC their long holdings from the previous quarter. These filings do not show the funds' short positions and require them to disclose their long holdings in equity markets. Additionally, they are required to file various puts or calls purchased in the options market as well as notes & bonds. These filings do not cover commodities, currencies, or other markets. So, we just wanted to clarify that for people new to 13f filings. We check these 13F filings quarterly just to get a sense as to where these funds are putting their money. If you just sit down and do some simple number crunching between this quarter's 13F and the one prior, you can see exactly where these funds have been moving their money. And, if you create a cloned portfolio based on these top hedge fund holdings, you can see 17% annualized returns like our custom Market Folly portfolio created with Alphaclone.

Please note that these 13F's should be treated as a lagging indicator simply because the 13F's that are being released currently (May 15th-20th 2009) show the funds' portfolio holdings as of March 31st, 2009. So, in the past month and a half, they could have completely changed their portfolio. But, at the same time, its easy to see which sectors they are flocking to and what their concentrated positions are.

We like to specifically follow equity focused hedge funds as they are the easiest to track. We focus on value based (or growth-at-a-reasonable-price) hedge funds in the hope that they won't experience ridiculously high turnover and thus allow us to somewhat track their movements as they build up concentrated positions. Specifically, we follow the 'Tiger Cubs' (otherwise known as the proteges of former hedge fund Tiger Management legend Julian Robertson). Many of these former proteges/right-hand men have started their own funds and here are the ones we've been following. (Note that all the links below are to the respective holdings from Q4 2008 & will be replaced with the Q1 '09 links as we go along).

- Blue Ridge Capital (John Griffin) - Q1 updated
- Lone Pine Capital (Stephen Mandel) - Q1 updated
- Maverick Capital (Lee Ainslie) - Q1 updated
- Viking Global (Andreas Halvorsen) - Q1 updated
- Tiger Global (Chase Coleman)
- Touradji Capital (Paul Touradji)
- Shumway Capital Partners (Chris Shumway)

Additionally, we also like to follow the Commodities Corporation "offspring" which have gone off to start their own funds and typically employ a global macro strategy.

- Tudor Investment Corp (Paul Tudor Jones)
- Moore Capital Management (Louis Bacon)
- Caxton Associates (Bruce Kovner)

Additionally, we like to follow other "whales" well known for their investing prowess. These include:

- Warren Buffett
- Carl Icahn
- George Soros (Soros Fund Management LLC)

Next, there is an assortment of funds that employ various strategies ranging from activist to global macro and often run concentrated portfolios. We track these funds due to their solid returns over the years, as well as the spotlight that has been cast on a few of them in this turbulent market.

- Atticus Capital (Timothy Barakett) - Q1 updated
- Tremblant Capital (Bret Barakett)
- Clarium Capital (Peter Thiel)
- Pequot Capital Management (Art Samberg)
- Harbinger Capital (Philip Falcone)
- BP Capital (Boone Pickens)
- Paulson & Co (John Paulson) - Q1 updated
- Jana Partners (Barry Rosenstein)
- Eton Park Capital (Eric Mindich) - Q1 updated
- Farallon Capital Management (Thomas Steyer)
- Galleon Group (Raj Rajaratnam)
- Citadel (Ken Griffin)

A few deep value & activist funds:

- Third Point (Daniel Loeb)
- Pershing Square (Bill Ackman)
- Greenlight Capital (David Einhorn) - Q1 updated
- Baupost Group (Seth Klarman) - Q1 updated
- Tontine Associates (Jeffrey Gendell)

For our readers, we also track some quant and highly active trading funds. We do not track these firms to gain insight for portfolio investing ideas. Instead, it's merely for fun because for whatever reason, people like to see what they are doing. It's basically useless to track them due to their quant or high frequency trading nature and none of us could really tell you the rhyme or reason behind any one of their positions.

- SAC Capital (Stevie Cohen)
- D.E. Shaw (David Shaw)
- Renaissance Technologies (Jim Simons)

We also track a few spin-off and newer funds on the scene that are run by managers with storied pasts:

- Conatus Capital (David Stemerman, ex-Lone Pine)
- James Pallotta's Raptor Capital Management (ex-Tudor)
- Alyeska Investment Group (Anand Parekh, ex-Citadel)

And, a few other funds we're beginning to track due to high demand from our readers. We receive a lot of suggestions and take the ones we see recurring the most and add them:

- Passport Capital (John Burbank)
- Sprott Asset Management (Eric Sprott)
- Balyasny Asset Management (Dmitry Balyasny)
- Hilltop Park Fund (Stanley Shopkorn, ex-Moore)

Over the coming weeks we'll touch on some of the important position moves these funds and whales have made (new positions, removed positions, etc). That list of funds brings our coverage to 40+ prominent hedge funds. If you would like to see a specific hedge fund covered here on MarketFolly.com, post up a comment in the comments section below. We're always looking to add more funds that readers would like to see, so please drop in your suggestions. Each quarter we'll add a few more funds that the overwhelming majority of readers want to see.

Last, but not least, we're always looking for people to help us cover these hedge funds, as it gets to be a bit tedious (this is a one-man show here). If you're interested in helping out posting up 13F information, please get in contact with us at the top of the site. The hedge fund tracking series 1st quarter 2009 edition starts today, so spread the word and check back daily.