Philippe Laffont’s Coatue Management established a huge, nearly 9-million share stake in the “C” shares of telecom giant Liberty Global in the second quarter. As a result, the stock is now the New York Tiger Cub’s second-largest holding, accounting for 7.6 percent of the firm’s U.S. long stock portfolio. The New York-based firm also trimmed 11 of its 12 top holdings it previously owned. In addition, Coatue liquidated its entire position in cable giant Charter Communications, which previously accounted for 4.72 percent of U.S. long assets. Coatue was down about 1.7 percent for the first six months of the year.
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Five new stock positions established by New York–based Tiger Seed Tiger Eye Capital in the second quarter immediately wound up among its top-ten U.S. equity long holdings. They include video game maker Activision Blizzard, online retail giant Amazon.com, swimming pool distributor Pool Corp., cable giant Charter Communications and credit information company TransUnion. Tiger Eye, headed by Benjamin Gambill also liquidated its large stake in Alphabet in the second quarter.
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Winton Capital Management, the largest hedge fund firm in Europe, slashed the size of its U.S. equity portfolio by more than one-third, to about $6 billion at the end of the second quarter, according to the firm’s latest regulatory filing. The London-based quantitative firm offers products dedicated to equities in addition to its broad-based funds. Altogether, the firm manages $30 billion.
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Hedge funds generated an average return of 2.17 percent in July, boosting gains for the year to 3.67 percent, according to London-based hedge fund tracker Preqin. This is still less than half the year-to-date gain posted by broad indices like the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index and the Wilshire 5000. Over the past five months hedge funds have posted a cumulative gain of 6.96 percent. Event-driven strategies are the best performer over the first seven months of the year, posting average gains of 6.13 percent, followed by macro strategies, up 4.57 percent, according to Preqin.
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Preqin also reports that in a survey of hedge fund managers, 31 percent said they expected the Brexit vote to have a positive impact on performance. In July, European hedge funds posted 2 percent gains, their highest monthly performance in over a year, the report points out. However, this was still lower than the gains generated by funds in North America and Asia-Pacific, which rose 2.68 percent and 2.26 percent, respectively. Altogether, European funds remain in the red for the year, down 0.49 percent.
