Curative, based in Austin, Texas, offers an employer-based health plan with $0 out-of-pocket costs, including no co-pays, no deductibles and no coinsurance. Members just have to complete an annual preventative health visit in order to obtain the $0 out-of-pocket costs.

The Series B funding was led by TED Chairman Chris Anderson’s Upside Vision Fund and included participation from Justin Mateen, founder of JAM Fund. Additional investors include Mike Novogratz of Galaxy Digital, Stanley Druckenmiller’s Duquesne Family Office, DCVC and Martin Varsavsky. The financing will help scale Curative’s business nationally, according to the announcement.

Angle Health raises $134 million in Series B funding

San Francisco-based Angle Health is a digital healthcare benefits provider for employers. Its AI-powered app offers care navigation services through its care team. Its customizable health plans include telemedicine, behavioral health and other digital health solutions. The company can also help with payment processing, billing and invoicing, and serves more than 3,000 employers across 44 states.

Angle Health’s Series B round was led by Portage and included participation from Blumberg Capital, Mighty Capital, PruVen Capital, SixThirty Ventures, TSVC, Wing VC and Y Combinator. The round included a combination of debt and equity. In total, Angle Health has raised about $200 million.

Paradigm Health rakes in $78 million in Series B funding

Paradigm Health offers an AI-powered platform that aims to provide equitable access to clinical trials for patients. The platform automates patient matching with clinical trials and helps health systems accrue eligible patients for trials.

The funding was led by ARCH Venture Partners, with participation from DFJ Growth, F-Prime, General Catalyst, GV, Lux Capital, Mubadala Capital and the American Cancer Society’s BrightEdge Fund. The financing “will be used to accelerate Paradigm Health’s expansion as demand grows from global biopharmaceutical companies for more efficient trials and from health systems seeking to offer trials to patients closer to where they receive routine care,” according to the announcement.

Artera raises $65 million in funding

Santa Barbara, California-based Artera is a healthcare technology company that leverages AI to help providers communicate more easily with patients. Its platform uses automated text, voice and web messaging to handle things like appointment scheduling, intake and billing.

The funding included support from Lead Edge Capital, Jackson Square Ventures, Health Velocity Capital, Heritage Medical Systems and Summation Health Ventures. It will help Artera further grow its company and adopt agentic AI in healthcare.

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You won’t find it at the top of the list, among the Bezoses and former Bezoses and Buffetts. It’s not that the Medallion fund continues to provide Jim Simons with a very comfortable retirement, indeed, or that the coronavirus pandemic has been a $2 billion pain for Ray Dalio. Nor is it that Ken Griffin is $2.3 billion richer, and richer than Steve Cohen at that, or that Carl Icahn, his COVID jollies notwithstanding, is $3.6 billion poorer.

Indeed, you’ll have to scroll past a lot of familiar names and fortunes: Chase Coleman’s is up by more than 50%, Revlon-owner Ron Perelman’s is down by $1.5 billion, Stan Druckenmiller has built a perfect parabolic curve over the last five years, Dan Loeb managed not to lose money last year, and Leon Cooperman is not taking retirement well. You’ll have to go beyond even Forbes’ latest lie about the dear leader, implying the Trump presidency has been even worse for the Trump business than Trump leading it was. You’ll have to go all the way to the bottom, to the 10-way tie for last place. Paupers, you might say, with a mere $2.1 billion apiece. Names you needn’t remember like Peter Thiel’s, because they won’t even be here next year. And perhaps that’s true. But among those names, for the first time since 2015, is one Bill Ackman, a man who just over a year ago was dangerously close to not even being a billionaire anymore. Yes, Virginia: The Ackmanaissance is very real, and poised to power its namesake straight up the Forbes 400 in the years to come.

The Forbes 400 [Forbes]

“Of course retail investor activity is downright terrifying,” Gundlach said during an investor webcast on Tuesday, pointing to the surge in daily average trade and trade per account on online brokers. “We just see how much trading is going on in retail,” he said…. Gundlach likened the newbie investors to a kid who is offered candy from a stranger.

“It looks like people are kind of re-gifting the candy the con has given them ... they are throwing that candy into this retail investment fervor,” added the so-called “Bond King.”

“This is a terrible sign for the condition of the market for anybody who’s experienced a significant number of cycles, which I’ve definitely experienced,” Gundlach said.

Not that you need to have taken as many trips down Mammary Lane as Gundlach or experienced the pain and pleasure of an 8-inch glass dildo while enjoying the hospitality of a pink and black strap restraining device while wearing a Sexy Slave kit to know that what’s going on down on Wall Street just isn’t right.

“Everybody loves a party ... but, inevitably, after a big party there’s a hangover,” [Stanley Druckenmiller,] the billionaire CEO of the Duquesne Family Office said in a “Squawk Box” interview. “Right now, we’re in an absolute raging mania. We’ve got commentators encouraging companies to do stock splits. Companies then go up 50%, 30%, 40% on stock splits. That brings no value, but the stocks go up….”

“I have no clue where the market is going to go in the near term. I don’t know whether it’s going to go up 10%; I don’t know whether it’s going to go down 10%,” Druckenmiller said. “But I would say the next three to five years are going to be very, very challenging.”

“We’ve been in a speculative frenzy, and I think the bubble popped,” [Michael Novogratz] said on “Closing Bell.” “I think we’ve put the highs in for the year in both the Nasdaq and in Tesla, and now it’s a ‘sell the rally,’ not a ‘buy the dip’ market, so the psychology has to change….”

“Certainly, the bull market is not over yet. I do feel like we’re getting close….”

Bond king Jeffrey Gundlach says the surge in retail investor activity is ‘downright terrifying’ [CNBC]
Stanley Druckenmiller says the stock market is in an ‘absolute raging mania’ [CNBC]
Novogratz says tech sell-off has changed market mindset: ‘I think you’re going to see more pain’ [CNBC Pro]

Steve Schwarzman never gives to Democratic candidates. Literally never, according to OpenSecrets.org. Druckenmiller hasn’t given much to that side recently, either, and when he did, it tended to go to the likes of Tulsi Gabbard.

So what’s so special about this Democratic candidate? This Michelle Caruso-Cabrera from New York’s 14th congressional district, covering some seriously unglamorous stretches of Queens and the Bronx?

Oh, right: There’s nothing special about Michelle Caruso-Cabrera other than the fact that she isn’t the current representative for the 14th: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Well, that’s not entirely fair, at least as far as the aforementioned donors and the others who gave this first-time candidate a $2 million (and counting!) war chest that would be the envy of most first-time candidates, to say nothing of, like, 350 sitting members of Congress. After all, she used to be on CNBC, and is married to one of them, which is to say an investment banker who’s also a big-time Republican donor. Oh, yea, and she’s not really a Democrat: She was a registered Republican until 2015, five years after writing a book (with foreword by Larry Kudlow!) with the tremendously original title of You Know I’m Right, pushing such traditional Democratic positions as an end to Medicare and Social Security.

Not that any of that was mentioned in the fliers overstuffing my mailbox or the television ads blanketing the tristate area over the last couple of weeks, all paid for by Druckenmiller & co. They instead focused on the allegation that Ocasio-Cortez, who after all was elected to a job in Washington, was an absentee congresswoman who didn’t really grow up in the Bronx but in leafy Westchester and who in D.C. lives in a “luxury apartment with a Whole Foods in the lobby,” accusations with a spectacular degree of chutzpah from a candidate born in Ohio and raised in New Hampshire who moved to one of the leafiest, whitest and most affluent corners of an overwhelmingly working-class and immigrant district all the way back in, uh, December, seemingly for the expressed purpose of running for the seat, having spent most of Ocasio-Cortez’s first year in Congress, and the 19 before that, living in Manhattan (at the Trump International Hotel and Tower, no less). Still, they got all the people usually interested in New York City Democratic congressional primaries very excited indeed.

Alas, for Caruso-Cabrera and her donors, if only she had as much success as she has disingenuousness.

That’s about $4.13 of Stan Druckenmiller’s money alone per vote, although surely that ratio should fall below $4 once the absentee ballots are counted next week. Probably. Anyway, he’s getting used to bad investments and humbling experiences, such as having to see these tweets.

Wall Street CEOs, from Goldman Sachs to Blackstone, poured in millions to defeat our grassroots campaign tonight.

But their money couldn’t buy a movement.

Thank you #NY14, and every person who pitched in for tonight’s victory.

Here’s to speaking truth to power. pic.twitter.com/g9aRV3Cu1B

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 24, 2020

When I won in 2018, many dismissed our victory as a “fluke.”

Our win was treated as an aberration, or bc my opponent “didn’t try.”

So from the start, tonight’s race was important to me.

Tonight we are proving that the people’s movement in NY isn’t an accident. It‘s a mandate.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 24, 2020

Of course, if Druckenmiller, Asness & co. would like some additional humbling, there’s good news: Caruso-Cabrera has secured the ballot line of something called the Serve America Movement party, which has all of 349 registered members in New York, for November, so there’s an opportunity to throw some more good money after bad.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez triumphs over Wall Street-backed Democratic primary opponent Michelle Caruso-Cabrera and all but secures a 2nd term [BI]

Andrew Hauser, the BOE’s executive director of markets, said on Thursday that hedge-fund trading strategies in U.S. government debt morphed into “stress amplifiers” in March, when fund managers raced to meet rising margin calls….

“Initially these trades were conducted quietly. But as time went on, their speed and size –- running to hundreds of billions of dollars –- began to overwhelm dealers,” Hauser said at an event hosted by Bloomberg. Hauser called this development a “classic doom loop.”

Well, maybe that’s not exactly the worst part. The worst part may be having to publicly eat crow over the situation.

“When Covid hit, I was pretty much of the view that there was a good chance that the credit bubble had finally burst and the unwinding of that leverage would take years….”

“Well I’ve been humbled many times in my career, and I’m sure I’ll be many times in the future. And the last three weeks certainly fits that category,” he said.

No, wait: The worst part is definitely having to watch this guy rub your nose in your wrongness.

“The market got it right,” CNBC’s [Jim] Cramer said on “Squawk on the Street” on Friday. “The big hedge fund guys who told us that this was going to be the highest and worst and most dangerous since 1999, well they made an ill-advised prediction….” Cramer, instead, is listening to the CEOs of beaten down industries for guidance on where the market is headed. Cramer said they are seeing “pent up demand.”

They know nothing!

Hedge Fund Bets Made March Market Chaos Much Worse, BOE Says [Bloomberg]
Stanley Druckenmiller says he’s been ‘humbled’ by market comeback, underestimated the Fed [CNBC]
Blowout jobs report shows ‘big hedge fund guys’ got it wrong and the market was right, says Cramer [CNBC]

Stan Druckenmiller said the risk-reward calculation for equities is the worst he’s seen in his career, and that the government stimulus programs won’t be enough to overcome real world economic problems…. “I pray I’m wrong on this, but I just think that the V-out is a fantasy,” the legendary hedge fund manager said, referring to a V-shaped recovery….

In the future, he said he wouldn’t be surprised if the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus outbreak becomes the “poster child for the worst public policy decisions ever made from a cost-benefit analysis.”

You hear it from the losers who hate America and want it to fail.

“For the year I think you’re going to see U.S. GDP down somewhere between 7% to 10% in real terms,” as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the government’s efforts to contain the spread of the virus with business shutdowns, and “10% is an economic depression,” said the founder of hedge fund Hayman Capital Management, in an interview.

Well, President Trump is hearing it, too. And he knows these people, because he is a so-called rich guy, too. And just as with his own pronouncements and those of his always spot-on economic team, you’ve got to remember that the things they say are often very self-serving, unfair and untrue.

When the so-called “rich guys” speak negatively about the market, you must always remember that some are betting big against it, and make a lot of money if it goes down. Then they go positive, get big publicity, and make it going up. They get you both ways. Barely legal?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 13, 2020

Ah, yes, the barely legal: Another topic on which the president is an expert from experience.

Trump warns that ‘rich guys’ could be talking down stock market to profit [CNBC]
Druckenmiller Says Risk-Reward in Stocks Is Worst He’s Seen [Bloomberg]
Investors should prepare for a U.S. ‘economic depression,’ warns Kyle Bass, but China’s fate could be even worse [MarketWatch]

Markopolos said he began questioning GE’s accounting as early as the 1990′s. But after the company completed a move to Boston, he said it became a “personal interest.”

“When you move to my hometown and you’re running a scam, I’m going to come after you,” he said.

You heard it, companies thinking about moving to the Hub: Do so at your own peril, because Harry Markopolos will crawl up your ass if you do. Oh, and if a hedge fund pays him handsomely to do so. Just don’t ask him about it.

“I can’t — I promised confidentiality,” Markopolos told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street ” Thursday. “It’s a mid-sized, U.S. based hedge fund.”

Markopolos said it was “their request,” not his, and that he was getting a “decent percentage” of profits that the hedge fund would make from betting against GE.

“Mid-sized” hedge fund, eh? Guess that rules out Marcato Capital. Anyway, while you try to figure out which one it is (guesses in the comments!) let’s see what the former manager of a very large U.S.-based hedge fund thinks of all of this.

“I believe Culp ... I bought stock today,” Druckenmiller told CNBC’s Kelly Evans in a statement. The hedge fund manager already held 6.2 million shares of GE, according to filings…. Druckenmiller… once bet against GE shares….

And he’s not the only one buying G.E. shares, and not buying what Markopolos is selling.

Larry Culp, who took over the struggling industrial conglomerate last year, bought 252,200 shares for $7.93 each, according to a Thursday evening filing with the SEC. The CEO has roughly doubled his holding of GE shares this week….

Equity analysts didn’t seem convinced that Markopolos had a bulletproof case, either…. “We tend to find the effort to portray GE’s current financial condition assuming all three alleged cash or noncash charges totaling ~$38 billion should have been previously recognized is at best disingenuous and at worst highly inaccurate,” Heymann said in a note to clients Thursday….

“The 175 page report seems sensationalized and according to press reports the author appears to have a financial interest in a GE stock decline given a partnership with an undisclosed hedge fund,” Kaplowitz said in a note to clients Thursday. “Overall, we think that some of the allegations were already known and others ‘known unknowns,’ which lead us to retain our conviction in the potential for share price outperformance over time.”

Harry Markopolos says he can’t reveal the hedge fund he’s working for in his investigation of GE [CNBC]
GE rebounds after CEO share purchases, Wall Street analysts come to company’s defense [CNBC]
Stanley Druckenmiller says he bought GE stock during plunge amid fraud accusations [CNBC]
Mick McGuire’s Marcato Capital Loses 90% of Assets [WSJ]

Yea, none of that will prevent Druckenmiller from offering his own dire prediction if some other elderly, New York City-born, longshot candidate should be elected president next year.

“If Bernie Sanders became president, I think stock prices should be 30% to 40% lower than they are now,” he said Friday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box. ”

“The good news is we’d all be much more equal because everybody would be poorer but the rich would have lost a lot more wealth than the poor would have,” he joked.

And that is not the only cloud at which this old man wishes to yell.

Billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller went after President Donald Trump and lawmakers on Friday for their moves against big technology companies.

“We are attacking our companies that are the leaders in this stuff. But man, it’s great. We’re supporting our steel industry, our coal industry, [and] our aluminum industry. Way to think about the future, President Trump, just genius,” Druckenmiller said sarcastically on CNBC’s “Squawk Box. ”

Stanley Druckenmiller says stocks would fall 30% to 40% if Bernie Sanders is elected president [CNBC]
Druckenmiller hits back on government moves against Big Tech [CNBC]

The man has attacked individual public companies, shared oddly vague optimistic pablum about macroeconomics and literally started more than one trade war via his personal social media account. It's quite a breathtakingly batshit reality to behold, and traders have made it even more amazing by responding to the tweets and making the whole thing real. Aside from injecting a little fun volatility into an otherwise somnambulant market, the tweets have been almost insignificant in the long-term ---- despite what algorithms seem to think -- and we're all left confounded and exhausted by the spectacle.

But one big name is done pretending to have fun with this nonsense:

Stanley Druckenmiller, a billionaire hedge fund manager with a long track record of beating the market, said Monday that he sold nearly all of his investments and piled into Treasurys following President Donald Trump’s May tweet that escalated the U.S.-China trade dispute.

“When the Trump tweet went out, I went from 93% invested to net flat and bought a bunch of Treasurys,” Druckenmiller said. “Not because I’m trying to make money, I just I don’t want to play in this environment.”

Big Druck is taking his ball and going home. This whole thing has gotten out of hand, and his big bet on China was clearly looking way too shaky. Plus, homeboy is just out here trying to play some golf!

Druckenmiller, who was interviewed by Key Square Capital Management founder Scott Bessent at The Economic Club of New York, said that he’s concerned Trump’s aggressive trade policies may have damaged the U.S. economy and believes the president will be beat by Democrat opponents in 2020.

“I did not expect the lovely tweet that interrupted my golf game on Sunday afternoon about a month ago,” he joked.

And when you mess with the Druck's short game, you get the short horns:

The hedge fund manager said he did not have a strong conviction on which way the financial markets will go from here.

“I actually own a lot of Treasurys and when I bought them I wasn’t sure rates were going to go down, what I was sure was that they weren’t going to go up,” he said.

"Let's see who moves money today," muses the Druck to himself.

Stanley Druckenmiller sold everything and bought Treasurys after Trump’s tweet threatening China [CNBC]

Druckenmiller, 65, explained that his investment process has always involved divining so-called market signals. But quantitative funds, which now account for $1 trillion in assets, have muted or even silenced those cues, making it a lot less clear what’s behind price moves.
“I think the message over eight or nine months is still great," said Druckenmiller, who converted his hedge fund to a family office after closing Duquesne Capital Management in 2010. "I just think over a week or two, you’re getting noise that used to mean something, and now it doesn’t mean anything."

Druckenmiller wouldn't manage outside assets right now if George Soros dropped to his knees and begged him [well , we don't want to spoil that possibilty], because these goddamn nerds and their algorithms are ruining EVERYTHING!!! Now that these virgins with math degrees are letting any Tom, Dick or Einhorn think they can run a hedge fund, it makes running a hedge fund way harder and way less cool...

"Volatility is only good if it’s part of the trend and it’s giving you entry points within a trend," he said. "When you’re going up and down, but there’s no real trend, that’s a nightmare. You might think that a volatility move is the beginning of a trend and get yourself whipsawed."

And Big Druck isn't alone, the guy who is somehow still running the Treasury Department agrees that quants suck butts:

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin blamed volatility in equity markets partly on high-speed trading and the effect of the Volcker Rule, adding that he planned to conduct an inter-agency review of market structure.
“Over a longer period of time the market reflects various different economic components but a normal trading day now is a 500-point range. A lot of that has to do with market structure, and that’s something we’re going to take a look at,” Mnuchin said in a roundtable interview Tuesday at Bloomberg’s Washington office.

Setting aside the hilarious irony of Mnooks bagging on a regulatory rule put into law to prevent the kind of shit that made him rich in 2009, it's pretty hilarious to imagine an "It's A Wonderful Life" scenario in which Mnuchin was never appointed Treasury Secretary.

Because based on Mnooks professional history of being the Zelig of financial fads [Goldman -> Soros -> PE -> hedge fund -> mortgage crisis profiteer -. Hollywood money man] Steve Mnuchin would almost certainly be running an HFT quant fund in 2018, and that that would definitely be a "long-short equities play with some interest in cryptos and cannabis."

What would guys like Druckenmiller have thought about RatPac Capital LLC:

"I’m not surprised at all by the hedge funds not doing well," Druckenmiller said. In the future, "there’s probably going to be 10 to 20 of them that are great," and the rest shouldn’t be charging traditionally high fees.

Exactly.

Stan Druckenmiller Says Algos Are Robbing Markets of Trade Signals [Bloomberg]

Mnuchin Blames Volcker Rule, High-Speed Trading for Volatility [Bloomberg]

Duquesne Capital Management never really closed. It just became Point State Capital, with many of the same staffers, investors and $1 billion of Stan Druckenmiller’s money. This worked pretty well, and now Point State manages almost as much as Duquense did when Druckenmiller called it quits.

Jack Franke and Eric Lee know what we’re talking about, because they were among the staffers who started Point State back in 2011. But they had big dreams, man. Dreams of following in Druckenmiller’s footsteps by launching their own shop and eventually showing up the old man. So after five years of easy living at Point State, they struck out, and two years later, they have struck out.

“We have recently determined that we may not be able to generate the performance you expect from us going forward in the current market environment,” Blockhouse said in a letter to clients, an excerpt of which was seen by Bloomberg News.

Blockhouse Hedge Fund Is Shuttering After Two Years of Trading [Bloomberg]

Three years ago, this company was supposed to be making money now. Now it’s supposed to be making money by 2020. And I’m guessing by 2019 we’ll hear about 2025.

More of the same, however, doesn't equal a short thesis. Tesla has a way of turning investors into Captains Ahab. So what if Tesla isn't making money? If shareholders still believe in the Muskian dream, what does it matter if Tesla never makes a dime?

But for Chanos, it's not more of the same. Tesla is “headed for a brick wall,” the likes of which even the most diehard Teslaphiles haven't experienced. In essence, Musk is losing what made his vision unique. A few years ago, when every other electric offering was some “small little bug-like” product, Chanos said, Musk for the first time made electric vehicles “sexy” and “cool” and “aspirational.” But Tesla won't remain an outlier for long:

The problem [Musk] now has, as we’ve seen in the last two weeks with the Mission E rolled out by Porsche, which will come out in 2019, is that the competition is coming out with sexy sport cars and high end vehicles. This is going to be the reality by 2019, and that’s a different animal. You now have lots of competition, you have well-financed profitable companies competing against you.

This basically sums up Chanos's thesis, along with the obvious fact of Tesla's financial insecurity and the theory that Musk will board the last rocketship out of Planet Tesla before it implodes. Who could argue with that?

Stanley Druckenmiller, for one. Appearing on CNBC Wednesday, the Druck fielded a question on his opinion of Tesla, which seems exactly the sort of overleveraged, highly speculative stock he'd enjoy shorting. “I'll tell you a funny story,” Druckenmiller began...

I had a guy who managed some money for me come in when the stock was $82. And I think I was 62. [Note: This chronology is incompatible but whatever.] I had given myself a Tesla for my sixtieth birthday. And he had this incredibly effective analysis, like 20 pages of financials about why Tesla was a short. And at then end of this presentation – really well thought-out – I said, “Have you ever driven the car?”

And he said, “No.” And I sent him his redemption notice the next week.

This is the kind of storybook hedge-funder move that makes Druckenmiller such an O.G. Oh, you think Tesla's finances are a nightmare shitshow of Enron-like proportions? Well you, sir, haven't personally experienced Ludicrous Mode.

Still, even though driving a Tesla around makes Druckenmiller feel young enough to bludgeon a sovereign country's currency again, it hasn't turned him into a Tesla long:

I don’t put Tesla in the Amazon category. They have not proved to me that as a financial model, an economic model, it’s going to work. But I also don’t like to short great products, that’s not my deal.

So what would a 62(?)-year-old Druckenmiller have said to Chanos a few years ago had the Kynikos Associates chief come to him with his fully developed Tesla short? Turns out, Chanos has driven a Model S (“they're great!”), so at least he passes that test. As for the rest of the thesis, who knows. One of them is right for the wrong reasons and the other is right for the wrong reasons. We just don't know who's who yet.

Famed Short-Seller Jim Chanos Says Tesla Headed for ‘Brick Wall’ [BBG]
CNBC's full interview with legendary investor Stanley Druckenmiller [CNBC]

Stanley Druckenmiller may not have voted for Donald Trump, but he has an uncanny instinct for the man. Or, at least, how the markets will react to the man. Amidst the turmoil and uncertainty of the run-up to last year’s election, Druck was more likely to vote for Bernie Sanders than own a stock, preferring to hoard gold, which he then sold at a tidy profit the moment Trump got his 270th electoral vote and dumped it back into stocks, which—as he predicted—soared. With the Trump Trade looking a little limp lately, however, Druckenmiller’s been looking for some juice elsewhere—and the Donald’s not going to like it.

The billionaire's hedge fund took a stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba of 710,000 shares, according to a required 13-F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Monday. The hedge fund also took a 597,000-share stake in Yum China.

The firm increased its stake in Alibaba rival JD.com by 721,000 shares to 1.36 million shares, and added 500,000 shares of Chinese travel services company Ctrip for a 1.41 million share stake, the filing showed.

Guess what, though? It’s working.

Shares of Alibaba and JD.com have climbed nearly 10 percent and 13 percent, respectively, so far this quarter.

Billionaire hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller is betting big on the Chinese consumer [CNBC]

The moments following the election of Donald Trump to the highest office in the land could have provided George Soros an excellent opportunity to put his little theory of reflexivity into action. The hedge fund elder's guiding philosophy, essentially, is that people can be dim, but that doesn't keep them from making the world around them equally dim. Through positive feedback loops, even our dumbest fantasies can effect a dumb reality.

How might we apply this to the election? Soros didn't want a President Trump. He lavished $2o million on Democrats and their allies in the run-up to the election in order to avoid that eventuality. He considers Trump a “con-artist and would-be dictator.”

But none of that has any bearing on what the market would do in the wake of Trump's surprise victory. Soros bet on a zig. The stock market zagged. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Mr. Soros was cautious about the market going into November and became more bearish immediately after Mr. Trump’s election, according to people close to the matter. The stance proved a mistake—the stock market has rallied on expectations that Mr. Trump’s policies will boost corporate earnings and the overall economy.

As a result, some of Mr. Soros’s trading positions incurred losses approaching $1 billion, the people say. Mr. Soros adjusted his positions and exited many of his bearish bets late last year.

Soros can be excused for coming up wrong-footed in the immediate wake of the election. All the signals leading up to November 8 indicated a bearish turn in case of a Trump win. Soros went with the prevailing sentiment and missed the narrative shift. It cost him $1 billion, people told the WSJ.

But the fact that it took Soros a month and a half to reverse his call is curious. The Trump rally is basically an object lesson in reflexivity. Trump talked up infrastructure spending, tax cuts and deregulation. The market narrative quickly shifted to price these in as near-certainties, while any sense of larger risks under the Trump presidency – trade war, nuclear annihilation, etc – evaporated. There was constant mumbling about “animal spirits.” Optimism bred optimism, and soon every other macro report was gushing about the inflationary potential of trillions in tax breaks and infrastructure spending. Stocks went up, which helped stocks go up more.

Whether you think the rally was justified, it's about as pure a demonstration of reflexivity as you're going to get out there in the markets. And Soros missed it.

His former protege Stanley Druckenmiller did not.

Days before the election, Mr. Druckenmiller predicted to an investor that if Mrs. Clinton emerged victorious the stock market likely would rally initially but then would fall. Mr. Druckenmiller said if Mr. Trump won the election, the opposite result likely would occur—stocks first would tumble and then soar.

It might matter that Soros and Druckenmiller each bet more or less along the lines of their politics – the former a Democrat, the latter a Republican. And Soros has a record of missing good trades when he has some political skin in the game. He could have shorted the ruble during the Russian financial crisis in 1998 – he had the inside information to make a killing – but instead he acted the diplomat in an ultimately failed effort to shore up Russia's finances.

But maybe it's worthwhile not to overthink the decisions of a guy who has given millions of dollars to this guy.

“I sold all my gold the night of the election. All the reasons I have owned it for the last couple of years, it seems to me they may be ending—and by the way, they are ending globally,” said the founder of Duquesne Capital in a CNBC interview on Thursday morning.

Whitney Tilson, who coined the nom de guerre “Con Man Don” for the president-elect, unsurprisingly has a somewhat different take. Like Druckenmiller, he’s selling—selling everything.

“I was at 60 percent cash coming into today, and I’m selling stocks today,” he told New York. Tilson said it was the third time in 18 years that he made bearish portfolio decisions on a macroecononic view, the other two being the dot-com and housing bubbles….

“I am now going to do everything in my power to make the best of a bad situation,” he said. “There is a possibility Trump could govern from the center and cut deals with Democrats on certain issues and really be a transformative president in a positive way,” he said. But, he added quickly, “I don’t think that’s likely. Putting on my hat as a hedge-fund manager, I think uncertainty is going to reign for the next four years, and markets hate uncertainty” — thus his decision to sell stocks. “There’s a meaningful possibility that global trade could be very negatively affected and tip the world into a recession.”

As befits him, Ray Dalio is a bit more philosophical about things. Since Tuesday night, he’s been trying to be assertive and open-minded at the same time, looking down on his machine (and himself within it) from the higher level, and seeking to apply logic, reason and common sense to our predicament. And after all that? Yea, he’s got nothing.

"There is much more that we don't know than we do know," Dalio wrote in a client letter viewed by Business Insider. "Our guess is that the markets will increasingly focus on what he is likely to do and less on how sensible he sounds."

Dalio added that Trump's win meant there were "a significantly wider range of possible policies" to consider — adding a wrench into market predictions. "It would be a mistake to use the rhetoric of a campaign as much of a guide to what policies are likely," Dalio added. "We have entered an extremely ambiguous and interesting period of time."

Ah, yes, extremely ambiguous interesting times. A curse worthy of the situation.

The night Trump was elected president, Stanley Druckenmiller dumped gold [MarketWatch]
Hedge-Fund Manager and Trump Critic Whitney Tilson Doesn’t Trust This Stock-Market Rally—He’s Positioning for a World Where ‘Uncertainty Reigns’ [New York Magazine]
RAY DALIO: ‘There is much more that we don’t know that we do know’ [BI]

HSBC said in a note to clients that Trump's policies and lack thereof would hurt the economy, earnings and possibly spark stagflation. Morgan Stanley told clients to stay on the sidelines during the sell-off driven by Donald Trump's upset win in the U.S. presidential election. Fundstrat's bullish strategist Tom Lee told investors the market will go higher as it prices in the positive policy implications of the Republican sweep.

Donald Trump’s Financial Advisory Team Stocked With Wall Streeters (WSJ)

Donald Trump’s successful insurgent bid for the White House promised to upend a global power structure that benefited large corporations. Now, several Wall Street financiers and other successful business leaders could be in line to run top posts in his presidential administration. People close to Mr. Trump have said he is considering Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who became his national campaign finance chairman in May, as his pick for Treasury secretary. If tapped for the job, Mr. Mnuchin would become the third Goldman alumnus in the last 20 years to head the Treasury, following Robert Rubin and Hank Paulson, who both served as the bank’s chief executive.

‘Flash-crash’ Trader Navinder Sarao Pleads Guilty To Spoofing (FT)

Navinder Singh Sarao, the UK day trader extradited to the US to face charges over the 2010 “flash crash”, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of “spoofing” in a Chicago court on Wednesday. The trader stood almost completely motionless with his head slightly bowed during a 90-minute hearing before a judge in a Chicago court, having lost his fight against extradition. He was dressed in a US prison-issue orange jumpsuit and had a chain around his legs. The judge accepted his guilty plea and he will be sentenced next year.

Billionaire Druckenmiller Says He's As Hopeful As He's Been In A 'Long Time' About Economy (CNBC)

Billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller, founder and former chairman of Duquesne Capital, told CNBC on Thursday that he's "quite, quite optimistic" on the U.S. economy. Druckenmiller, in the past, has been negative on the country's growth prospects, but he said in a "Squawk Box" interview: "It's as hopeful as I've been in a long time."

Hedgie Scaramucci Says He Wouldn’t Say No To Role With Trump Administration (NYPost)

“I would like to be involved [in a Trump administration] somehow tangentially, but I have my own business,” Scaramucci told The Post in an interview, adding that it would be tough to leave his $12 billion asset management firm. He then went on to say that a such a request would be “like be asking me to leave my local bodega.”

SEC Widely Expected to Ease Postcrisis Rules During Donald Trump’s Administration (WSJ)

The top U.S. markets regulator is about to take a rightward turn. President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised either to eliminate or sharply cut back the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial law, is expected to install critics of the Obama administration’s signature response to the financial crisis in positions at the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to people familiar with the matter.

Four Decades Of Discontent Trumps A Strong 2015 For U.S. Jobs And Pay In The Race To The White House (Resolution Foundation)

Many liberals have been taking comfort from the fact that a majority of poorer voters turned out for Clinton, with people being 10 per cent more likely to vote for Trump if their income is above $50,000. We might have lost, but at least this wasn’t a revolt of our core vote goes the argument. This is a bad argument. Yes the rich are always more likely to vote Republican (they teach this in US politics 101 I believe) but what matters is that the move towards Trump and away from the Democrats was entirely amongst middle and low income voters, with a huge 16 percentage point net move for instance amongst those with incomes under $30,000. This change is a key reason why a Republican, rather than the first woman President, will be in the White House in two months’ time.

Second Squirrel Attack Shocks Nursing Home (NBC)

[Video] A squirrel attack leaves an elderly woman injured at a Florida nursing home, the second incident in less than a week.

Since stepping onto the escalator that delivered him to the stage, Trump has attacked "hedge fund guys" as "getting away with murder," then hired one to run his campaign fundraising, ended up with a second being a super-major funder, floated the idea of making a third Treasury Secretary, and turned a fourth into the spiritual head of his economic policy team. But outside the aforementioned Steve Mnuchin, Bob Mercer, Carl Icahn and John Paulson (and sure, ok, Anthony Scaramucci), many in the industry have remained stlolidly resistant to supporting The Donald for President.

But as Reuters reported yesterday, that doesn't mean hedge fund guys are backing Hillary en masse or even staying out of Republican politics:

Stanley Druckenmiller, one of the best-performing hedge fund managers of all time, told Reuters he had recently given to Republican candidates for Congress in the hope of creating a “firewall” against Clinton’s economic policies, including more government control of healthcare and what he described as “astronomical disincentives” to invest.
Druckenmiller, who invests privately since closing his hedge fund firm in 2010, said Trump had an “unstable personality” that ruled him out as a candidate.
“I might just vote on the down ballot part of the ticket and not bother with the top,” he said.
Public filings show Druckenmiller donated to U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida in August and the National Republican Congressional Committee in March.

The Reuters report also found that Cliff Asness and Paul Singer joining Big Drucks in a down ballot GOP funding tactic that ignores Trump, while Julian Robertson is planning to vote for Gary Johnson...because he's such a hipster. Even Leon Cooperman (who some say was a founder of the GOP) will not be voting for the Republican candidate.

And then there are the longtime Hillary loyalists in the hedge funde world, your Paul Tudor Jonses, your Bill Ackmans, your David Shaws, your Soros clan, showing that the hedge fund world is split up even more than usual this year, but everyone has reached an opinion.

Well, almost everyone.

Yesterday, the man once responsible for propping New Jersey's economy with his income tax check went on CNBC and said this about the election:

Hedge fund billionaire David Tepper told CNBC on Monday that a "fairly bad choice at the top" of the election ballot is "affecting things."
"You have one person with a questionable judgment and the other person that may be demented, narcissistic and a scumbag. I'm not saying which one is which. You can make your own decision on that," the founder of Appaloosa Management said in an interview with Scott Wapner on "Halftime Report."

David Tepper is an undecided voter. Well, at least he says he is, calling one candidate a "demented narcissistic scumbag" and saying that the other possesses "questionable judgment" is not exactly apples to apples. To which candidate corresponds with each criticism is not for us to say, but it is fun to see that at least one major hdege fund manager is letting this thing ride into late October. And why wouldn't he now that "the richest person in New Jersey" has remade himself as "undecided Florida voter?"

While he has not supported either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton and is "sitting on the sidelines," Tepper said, "I'll probably vote for one — I'll vote at the end of the day. I'm in Florida, so my vote counts."

You've won our hearts again, David Tepper. Now stay off Reddit.

Rejecting Trump, Wall Street Republican donors scatter largesse [Reuters]
Tepper: One candidate lacks judgment, the other 'demented, narcissistic and a scumbag' [CNBC]

If and when fundie luminaries like David Einhorn, Stan Druckenmiller, Paul Singer, Seth Klarman and Paul Tudor Jones show up to the Sohn Conference at Lincoln Center today, they'll be met by the vestigial Occupy movement now calling itself "Hedge Clippers."

And according to social media, the greeting will be balls-out unfriendly:

The hidden truth of #Sohn2016. NO MORE #CancerousCash! pic.twitter.com/PN4RAHsdkM

— New York Communities for Change (@nychange) May 4, 2016

The group has more of these little graphics for Klarman and Singer, and they're literally outside Lincoln Center right now chanting and carrying on in an effort to "shut down" the Sohn conference. They've even got The Hulk helping out!

Hedge Funds + Dirty Energy= Cancer. @MarkRuffalo + Hedge Clippers = Fighting & Winning #sohn2016 #CancerousCash pic.twitter.com/0HxaPKtf1X

— Hedge Clippers (@GoHedgeClippers) May 4, 2016

Cool! Literal limousine liberalism!

This is "real," you guys.

But if the billionaires want to keep the fun ideas making their way around Lincoln Center - and, after all, this brainstorming session might be just what the embattled hedge fund industry needs to get back in the game - they can simply comply with Hedge Clippers "demands."

Several of the billionaire and multimillionaire hedge fund managers associated with the Sohn Conference Foundation are currently piling into fossil fuel investments, funding climate denial and promoting irresponsible politicians.
Their investments, philanthropy and campaign cash actually cause cancer.
David Einhorn, Stanley Druckenmiller, Paul Singer, Seth Klarman and Paul Tudor Jones are synonymous with “Cancerous Cash” in three major ways:

(1) They invest in big polluters and fossil fuels
(2) They fund junk science and dirty think tanks, and
(3) They bankroll the political candidacies of climate change deniers.

Instead of investing in green energy and renewable resources, these hedge fund managers are pouring billions of dollars into propping up the fossil fuel industry, in an attempt to enrich themselves at the expense of people and the planet.
The very same individuals you have solicited to raise money for pediatric cancer research are making millions of dollars through investments that have increased exposure to carcinogenic chemicals for children and adults.
These hedge fund managers are deeply involved in investments and lobbying that are keeping the cancer-causing fossil-fuel industry afloat, despite historic and worldwide rejection of dirty energy.

Basically, Hedge Clippers and Mark Ruffalo and Greenpeace et al. want Sohn to cancel the appearances of the aforementioned fund managers...therefore solving everything.

In a way you could say that the Sohn conference is Hillary Clinton and that Hedge Clippers are Bernie Sanders. Sure, Bernie is standing outside a fancy venue shouting about the moral turpitude going on inside - and more than a few passersby even think he has a point - but the conference is still going to happen because in the end the issue is just too complicated.

And Mark Ruffalo won't even get out of the car.