From David Stockman at davidstockmanscontracorner.com:
The destruction of honest financial markets by the Fed and other central banks has created a class of hedge fund hot shots that are truly hard to take. Many of them have been riding the bubble ever since Alan Greenspan got it going after the crash of 1987 and now not only claim to be investment geniuses, but also get downright huffy if the Fed or anyone else threatens to roil the casino.
Leon Cooperman, who is an ex-Goldman trader and now proprietor of a giant fund called Omega Advisors, is one of the more insufferable blowhards among these billionaire bubble riders. Earlier this week he proved that in spades.
It seems that his fund had a thundering loss of more than 10% in August during a downdraft in the stock market that the Fed for once took no action to counter. But rather than accept responsibility for the fact that his portfolio of momo stocks took a dive during a wobbly tape, Cooperman put out a screed blaming the purportedly unfair tactics of other casino gamblers:
Lee Cooperman, the founder of Omega Advisors, has joined the growing chorus of investors blaming last week’s stock market sell-off — and his own poor performance in August — on esoteric but increasingly influential trading strategies pioneered by hedge funds like Bridgewater.
Well now. Exactly how was Bridgewater counting the cards so as to cause such a ruction at the gaming tables?
In a word, Ray Dalio, the storied founder of the giant Bridgewater “All-Weather” risk parity fund, has been doing the same thing as Cooperman, and for nearly as many decades. Namely, counting the cards held-out in plain public view by the foolish monetary central planners domiciled in the Eccles Building.
To be sure, Dalio’s fund has had superlative returns and there is undoubtedly some serious algorithmic magic embedded in Bridgewater’s computers. But at the end of the day its all a function of broken capital markets that have been usurped and rigged by the Fed.
To continue reading: Why Hedge Fund Hot Shots Finally Got Hammered
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