market folly

Various short sale disclosures in European Union markets reveal that numerous prominent hedge funds are short shares of two European airlines: Deutsche Lufthansa AG (LHA.F) and Air France-KLM (AF).

Regulatory rules require funds to publicly disclose when they have a net short position of 0.5% of shares or greater.


Hedge Funds Short Deutsche Lufthansa AG

Senator Investment Group: Net short 0.72% of shares as of July 16th.  This is up from a 0.64% position on July 15th and a 0.54% position on June 8th.

Marshall Wace: Net short 0.7% of shares as of July 22nd, 2015.  This is up from a 0.64% position on July 10th and a 0.55% position on June 19th.

Blue Ridge Capital: Net short 1.02% of shares as of June 18th, 2015.

AKO Capital: Net short 0.69% of shares as of June 29th, 2015.

Discovery Capital: Net short 0.61% as of July 1st.

Lone Pine Capital: Last reported a 0.94% net short position on April 30th, 2015.


Hedge Funds Short Air France-KLM

Blue Ridge Capital: Net short 0.92% of shares as of June 23rd, 2015, an increase from the 0.73% they were short just a day earlier.

Discovery Capital: Net short 0.77% of shares as of July 2nd, 2015.  Up from a 0.63% position on July 1st.

Tyrian Investments: Net short 0.42% of shares on July 1th, down from a net short position of 0.54% on March 5th, 2015.

Odey Asset Management: Net short 0.26% of shares as of July 17th.  This is a decrease from the 0.58% position they had on April 21st and the 1.32% stake they had on February 19th so they've definitely taken down exposure to the name.

AKO Capital: Their last disclosure was a net short of 0.7% of shares back on February 2nd, 2015.

Marshall Wace:  Their net short position size has fluctuated a lot over the past four months.  Their latest disclosure shows a net short of 3.11% as of July 7th.  Their short disclosures in the name go back to April 29th when they were short 2.65%.



You'll notice some overlap in funds on both airline shorts.  You'll also notice another commonality: a lot of 'Tiger Cub' hedge funds, or managers with ties to Tiger Management.

While these positions could either be hedges or alpha shorts, it's still interesting to get a look at the side of the portfolio that's normally quite secretive.

Stay tuned as we reveal more short positions next week.  We've already posted that Lone Pine is short Rolls Royce and Viking Global is short Peugeot. Also, Greenlight Capital is short ARM Holdings.