market folly

In a 13G filed with the SEC after the close yesterday, David Einhorn's hedge fund Greenlight Capital has disclosed a 5.2% ownership stake in TicketMaster (TKTM). The aggregate amount of shares beneficially owned is 2,953,100, up from the 2,547,346 shares they owned in their most recent 13F filing, which detailed their positions as of December 31st, 2008. So, they have boosted their stake and the filing was made due to activity on March 11th, 2009. You can view the rest of Greenlight's portfolio holdings here. Greenlight has been pretty active so far this year, as we've also covered their new positions in Jones Apparel (JNY) & Harman (HAR). Additionally, Einhorn has picked up positions in gold (GLD) & gold miners (GDX) among other things, as noted in our recent Greenlight portfolio update.

Greenlight Capital is a $6 billion fund ran by David Einhorn that specializes in spin-offs and value investing and has seen annual returns of over 20%. 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. He was caught in the massive Volkswagen short squeeze as he detailed in one of his latest investor letters. 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. Greenlight approaches things by identifying mispricings in the markets and going from there.

Taken from Google Finance,

Ticketmaster is "a live ticketing and marketing company. As of August 1, 2008, it operated in 20 countries worldwide, providing ticket sales, ticket resale services, marketing and distribution through www.ticketmaster.com, one of the e-commerce sites on the Internet, and related Internet and mobile channels, approximately 6,700 independent sales outlets and 19 call centers worldwide."