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Hedge-fund managers that do the most research will post the best returns

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Re: Hedge-fund managers that do the most research will post the best returns

#151
post #144
post #133

I tried to get bulk data from EDGAR a while back. Turns out bulk data acquisition has been turfed to a third party, which charges for downloads. This is supposed to be federal free data, I was so pissed off. I am still pissed off.

How long ago was this?

Half a year?

Re: Hedge-fund managers that do the most research will post the best returns

#152
post #110

Well couldn't it have been the opposite? Hypothesis: maybe this kind of research has the least marginal return, therefore only the most profitable funds are willing (or able) to invest in it (Bridgewater would invest $10M for 0.1% of improvement while a small fund can't afford that luxury given that 0.1% is fund size independent).

I don't know, I would think that the cost of finding good investment opportunities would increase as a fund gets bigger assuming all the funds have enough money to operate well. An opportunity to invest 20 million dollars with an expected profit of 50% would be a lot better for a fund managing $300 million, but not as exciting for a fund managing $3 billion.

Re: Hedge-fund managers that do the most research will post the best returns

#153
post #133

I tried to get bulk data from EDGAR a while back. Turns out bulk data acquisition has been turfed to a third party, which charges for downloads. This is supposed to be federal free data, I was so pissed off. I am still pissed off.

Huh? It takes time to download all the filings by parsing the index for free [1] but it can be done. You also have to add back off logic when you get a "too many requests" error, but it isn't that hard. I did it and I am still updating as new filings are posted.

1. https://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/accessing-edgar-data.h...

Re: Hedge-fund managers that do the most research will post the best returns

#154

Around 2008, I read some public filings by banks. I made only two back-of-the-napkin adjustments: 1) I combined off-balance sheet assets and liabilities into the balance sheet, and 2) I changed the expected % losses to approximately that of Wells Fargo. With those two simple adjustments, I saw that some big banks were in the hole by (combined) tens of billions of dollars. The market prices for these banks made it cle…

Hi what accounting topics would you have to learn in order to read the 10-Ks? I have basic understanding in economics and CS. Thank you.

Sorry, I'm not sure I can give good advice on this because I got a bachelor's degree which is probably way more than needed. There's probably a more efficient way.

Re: Hedge-fund managers that do the most research will post the best returns

#155

Around 2008, I read some public filings by banks. I made only two back-of-the-napkin adjustments: 1) I combined off-balance sheet assets and liabilities into the balance sheet, and 2) I changed the expected % losses to approximately that of Wells Fargo. With those two simple adjustments, I saw that some big banks were in the hole by (combined) tens of billions of dollars. The market prices for these banks made it cle…

What's your opinion on Tesla? Many people who read their financial documents say their situation is really bad.

They're spending a LOT of cash but the big thing that stands out is most of the cash outlays is for PPE (property/plant/equipment). At the rate they're spending, they have about a year's runway and need to keep raising money or stop spending (or have a HUGE increase in revenue).

I'm not sure what they're investing in and how much more they have to invest so I don't have an opinion.

Re: Hedge-fund managers that do the most research will post the best returns

#157
post #139

Around 2008, I read some public filings by banks. I made only two back-of-the-napkin adjustments: 1) I combined off-balance sheet assets and liabilities into the balance sheet, and 2) I changed the expected % losses to approximately that of Wells Fargo. With those two simple adjustments, I saw that some big banks were in the hole by (combined) tens of billions of dollars. The market prices for these banks made it cle…

I'm starting a career in accounting and would appreciate a recommendation or two on what outside-of-school resources you used to better your understanding. Recommendations?

Sorry, but I didn't actually make a career out of accounting (I only wanted the knowledge to understand investments and maybe as a backup career plan). I don't think I can give meaningful advice on this.

Re: Hedge-fund managers that do the most research will post the best returns

#158
post #66
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renaissance Technologies has completely automated the process of signal discovery.[1] They don't hire researchers to manually derive novel insights or trading models from data, and they don't really bother with exclusive sources of data. Instead, they hire researchers to improve methods for automatically processing vast amounts of arbitrary data and extracting profitable trading signals from it. When most funds say t…

How scalable is RenTec? Can they go up to 100B in AUM? 200B?

No they can't. I think they have order of magnitude of 10bn of their own money in their good strategies (Medallion et al), and another 10bn-ish of external money in their bad/stale strategies (which are still among the better hedge funds and can charge 1%+10).

But reputedly they neither allow external money into Medallion nor do they let employees compound their existing stake in the fund but pay out ginormous 20%-40% annual dividends exactly because the strategy is not scalable.

Re: Hedge-fund managers that do the most research will post the best returns

#160
post #33

Not surprised at all. Anecdote: A friend and I used to run a website that tracked activist short sellers and their campaigns, and published all that information as a nice centralized database basically. Hedge funds were, by far, the most interested in this - which was surprising to us, our original target audiences were auditors and legal firms. My impression from this experience is that the more successful hedge fun…

I remember your website. I was at a hedge funds that used your service. I had a few conversations by email and by phone with your partner too (nice guy and went to a good MBA school if I remember). I understand why there were maybe bigger and better opportunities vs return on time needed to keep doing your activist short site going as it is quite niche. Are you involved in the space at all any more?

For others reading here and in case curious, the hedge fund I was working at wasn't interested in paying for access to tracking of activist short campaign data for the short trade ideas themselves. There is little interest in copying or jumping onto another's trade like that. The real interest the hedge fund wants to get alerts and track these campaigns was to keep an eye on what other hedge funds are doing - it was more about competitor and industry colleague research than securities research.

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