Hedge funds cut back on energy, buy agriculture in 2nd quarter |
Date: Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Author: Reuters
Philippe Laffont's Coatue
Management was bullish on Chipotle's burritos and tacos in the second quarter,
while activist hedge fund Jana Partners LLC soured on energy stocks as the firm
dumped shares in Marathon Petroleum and Hess Corp. It is that time of the year again when hedge funds and other big money
managers disclose their U.S. stock holdings at the end of the most recent
quarter in so-called 13-F filings. The filings offer a chance for ordinary investors to see what closely watched
money managers like Bill Ackman, Warren Buffett, David Einhorn and Dan Loeb are
doing with their investors' money. The second quarter was a difficult one for stocks and hedge funds. The
benchmark S&P 500 fell 3.3 percent in the period, while funds on average lost
2.7 percent in the quarter. The filings from hedge funds, which will be submitted to the Securities and
Exchange Commission throughout the day Tuesday, will no doubt reveal some of
that tumult in the stock market. For a better analysis of how big money managers traded in the sector quarter,
here is a breakdown by sectors and high-profile stocks. ENERGY Jana, the hedge fund led by Barry Rosenstein, exited its position in Marathon
Petroleum, which had been the fund's largest stock holding at the end of the
first quarter. The fund also sold all of it shares in Hess, another oil company. Tom Steyer's Farallon Capital made a big adjustment to its holding of gas
pipeline company Kinder Morgan Inc, which finalized its acquisition of El Paso
earlier this year. In the first quarter it held 22.5 million shares but at the
end of the second quarter it owned 4 million shares and had warrants to acquire
and additional 5.2 million shares. FOOD and AGRICULTURE Jana opened a new position in Canadian fertilizer company Agrium, buying 6.5
million shares. Coatue added 185,000 shares of Mexican restaurant chain Chipotle, bringing
its total holdings to 567,102 shares. FACEBOOK The popular social networking company had the most closely watched and
controversial initial public offering of the quarter. The first well-known manager to disclose a significant position in Facebook
in the period was Chase Coleman's Tiger Global Management with 1.96 million
shares. The hedge fund was a pre-IPO investor in Facebook.
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