Wall Street legend and one-time hedge fund manager Carl Icahn bought an additional 1.83 million shares of Herbalife, at $54.70 apiece, boosting his stake in the multi-level marketer of nutrition and health care products to 23.05 percent. This move could spark a short squeeze on the stock, which of course would be bad news for Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management, which has a big negative bet against the stock. However, on Friday, the stock dropped 2 percent, to close at $54.96. The stock is now down 14 percent from its recent high on October 3.
___
Tiger Global Management’s long-short hedge funds edged up by 0.60 percent in October. However, the gain hardly put a dent into the firm’s loss for the year. The funds are now down 14.4 percent heading into the final two months of the year.
___
Easy come, easy go. Joseph Edelman’s Perceptive Life Sciences Fund, managed by his firm, Perceptive Advisors, lost 8.6 percent in October after gaining around 18 percent the previous month. However, the diversified biotechnology and health care fund is still up 3 percent for the year.
___
Eddie Lampert personally bought another 284,000 shares or so of Sears Hometown and Outlet Stores, the home appliance and gardening supplies chain spun off from Sears Holdings, for a little less than $5 per share. This is the second time in a week that the founder of hedge fund firm ESL Investments bought additional shares of the company for his own account.
___
Louis Bacon’s Moore Capital Management disclosed it owns nearly 2.83 million shares of GTY Technology Holdings, or 5.1 percent of the special purpose acquisition company.
