16/02/2010 Author: Tony Griffiths

HFMWeek Daily Snapshot - 16 February 

NEWSPAPERS & WIRES
Investors are positioning themselves for halts in both Europe and China’s economic recovery, according to the BofA Merrill Lynch Survey of Fund Managers for February. Investors have scaled back their growth expectations, retreated into cash and are increasingly skeptical that the European Central Bank (ECB) will increase interest rates in 2010. The panel was responding to questions against a backdrop of economic crisis in peripheral eurozone countries and concerns over monetary tightening in China. World equity markets fell by 8.9% during the survey period.
 
Dietmar Schmitt, founder and CIO of London hedge fund SAM Capital Partners, compares his work as a high-turnover stock trader to that of a fruit seller. "I don't make a lot of money out of each apple. But if I were to store the apples, there's no way to know how much I'd make selling them in the future," Schmitt said in an interview with the WSJ. His fund, run by a team of three portfolio managers, makes a few hundred trades a month based on a universe of 300 major European stocks. On any given day, the fund has around 30 positions, roughly split between longs and shorts.
 
KTOs Capital Partners Co, a Japanese fund of hedge funds (FoHF) advisory firm, aims to raise and invest 30 billion yen ($333m) this year in new Asian hedge funds being established as global financial crisis ebbs, reports Bloomberg. Satoko Koshida, founding partner of the Tokyo-based firm, is teaming up with Tetsuo Tanimura, the head of hedge-fund consulting firm C2G Advisors Co, to mine new funds run by former traders and managers of major financial institutions, Koshida said in an interview in Tokyo yesterday.
 
Brazil is expected to be a major investment destination for global investors over the next decade, according to Ashmore Investment Management, specialist emerging markets asset manager. A largely closed economy with strong domestic demand, Brazil has weathered the credit crunch and should see benefits from global rebalancing. "Over the next ten years, and as domestic investors become more accustomed to lower interest rates than a decade ago, we will see more allocation outside money markets,” said Eduardo Camara Lopes, CEO of Ashmore Brasil.
 
A young New York hedge fund manager managed to impress one of the smartest guys in the investing world, says FIN Alternatives. In a story that she’ll likely retell hundreds of times to potential investors, Permian Investment Partners founder Cara Goldenberg sent Warren Buffett some holiday reading material: Her reasons for investing in the top 10 stocks in her fund’s portfolio. The Oracle of Omaha responded with an invitation to dinner.
 
LAUNCHES
The former Citigroup star energy trader who became a symbol of big Wall Street pay-outs, is raising money for a hedge fund named after a village near his German castle, reports the FT. Andrew Hall, head of Phibro, the oil and gas trading unit that Citi sold to Occidental Petroleum last year, has formed hedge fund group Astenbeck Capital Management, which already has $1.4bn under management, including more than $700m in pooled commodity funds. Placement agents have been drumming up business on behalf of Hall and other Phibro managers, seeking a minimum $25m each from investors.