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Opening Bell: 9.8.21

Opening Bell: 9.8.21

GameStop earnings (as if they matter); Elliott has more helpful advice for Citrix; Credit Suisse steps in it again; and more!

Dicoplio Family, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

GameStop earnings (as if they matter); Elliott has more helpful advice for Citrix; Credit Suisse steps in it again; and more!

GameStop Fans Face Off Against Earnings Day History of Defeat [Bloomberg]
Shares of the video-game retailer were up 1.2% in New York on Wednesday but they have tumbled 18% on average the day after earnings since June 2019 -- they gained on such reports only twice since the start of 2018. Add on that the options market implies the stock will swing 15% by the end of Thursday’s session and it suggests it could be a choppy few days ahead for the company that helped set off the meme-stock trend…. “The company remains enormously structurally challenged as the entire market moves rapidly to streaming/downloads,” said Vital Knowledge’s Adam Crisafulli. “The company’s stock price is completely divorced from fundamentals and has been for some time.”

Elliott Management Has a More Than $1 Billion Stake in Citrix Systems [WSJ]
Elliott recently informed Citrix it has a stake of more than 10% in the company and would like to work with it to improve its valuation, the people said…. Citrix, like many legacy software companies, has had a rocky transition to a subscription-based model for its core virtual-desktop services. But it has benefited as the pandemic stokes demand for remote-work services, a trend that appears poised to continue…. While Elliott’s exact demands couldn’t be learned, it previously called for Citrix to focus on its core offerings and better allocate capital when the investor built a stake of more than 7% in June 2015.

For Chobani, Allbirds, Other Coming IPOs, Greed Is Out. Do-Gooding Is In. [WSJ]
In regulatory filings, companies are referring to themselves as “mission-driven,” counting the environment among stakeholders, highlighting their commitments to charity and touting their sustainable methods. It is partly a shift in corporate—and employee—values, and partly virtue signaling…. The rush of do-gooder companies comes as the broader U.S. IPO market is on a tear, with major stock indexes near records and volatility historically low. Money raised by newly public companies in 2021, including special-purpose acquisition companies, is already the highest on record for any full year, according to Dealogic. Traditional IPOs alone have raised a whopping $105 billion through Monday, just shy of record full-year totals set during the tech boom.

Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei says Credit Suisse closing foundation’s bank account over ‘criminal record’ [SCMP]
“Credit Suisse initially informed me that they had a new policy to terminate all bank accounts which are related to people with criminal records,” Ai told Reuters in an emailed statement, adding the foundation had been asked at the time to move the funds before September…. Ai helped design the 2008 Beijing Olympics’ famed Bird’s Nest stadium before falling foul of the communist government, which detained him for 81 days in 2011. He said he has never been formally charged or convicted of a crime….
He said managers then referred to an interview he had done with a Swiss newspaper several days before, in which he criticised Swiss people for voting in favour of tighter “anti-immigrant policies” as a reason for the closure.

Hedge Fund Verition Opens to Cash for Patient Investors Only [Bloomberg]
The U.S. firm is to accept money in a new share class that will allow investors to redeem just 8.33% of their assets every quarter, down from a previous 25%, according to an investor document seen by Bloomberg. That means it will take clients three years to withdraw all their money instead of one…. Since starting in 2008, Verition has never had a down year. It made a record 30.4% in 2020 to beat the 9.5% average gain in hedge funds tracked by Bloomberg, and has gained about 5% so far this year.

Job Postings Level Off as Delta Variant Cools Demand for In-Person Workers [WSJ]
The August gain was largely driven by increased demand for jobs that can be done from home, such as software development. Postings for child care fell and openings in construction and at restaurants rose only slightly….
“There was a pretty clear reversal of fortune in pandemic-sensitive sectors,” said Indeed economist Nick Bunker…. “The Delta variant has thrown a wrench into things and the pace of postings has slowed down,” Mr. Bunker said.

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SEC Said To Depose SAC’s Cohen In Insider-Trading Probe (Bloomberg) Cohen, 56, was recently deposed by Securities and Exchange Commission investigators in New York about trades made close to news such as mergers and earnings that generated profits at his hedge fund, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the investigation isn’t public. Neither Cohen nor SAC Capital, which oversees about $14 billion, has been accused of wrongdoing. Four-Week Jobless Claims Average Reaches 2012 High (Reuters) Initial claims for state unemployment benefits slipped 2,000 to a seasonally adjusted 387,000, the Labor Department said. The prior week's figure was revised up to 389,000 from the previously reported 386,000. Lawmakers Call For IPO Overhaul (WSJ) A bipartisan group of lawmakers called on regulators to overhaul the way initial public offerings are conducted, concerned that last month's flubbed stock sale by Facebook shows the current system unfairly punishes small investors. 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Riskier Bets Pitched To Asia's Rising Rich (WSJ) In Japan, brokers are dangling what they claim is a tasty product in front of wealthy investors: a "triple-decker" that uses options to squeeze higher returns from stocks, "junk" bonds or other assets. If a triple-decker doesn't suit an investor's fancy, there is the increasingly popular—and slightly less complex—"double-decker." Elsewhere in Asia, so-called hybrid bonds and other high-yield varieties can be had. Investors in Singapore recently could buy so-called perpetual bonds through ATMs. Across Asia, brokers are pushing to sell increasingly complex products to the region's expanding ranks of investors, especially wealthy ones. These types of products appeal to those hungry for yield who normally focus on stocks and real estate but are worried about falling equity markets and the sudden shortage of initial public offerings. BlueMountain Said To Help Unwind JPMorgan’s Whale Trades (Bloomberg) A hedge fund run by a former JPMorgan Chase executive who helped create the credit- derivatives market is aiding the lender as it unwinds trades in an index at the heart of a loss of more than $2 billion. BlueMountain Capital Management LLC, co-founded by Andrew Feldstein, has been compiling trades in Series 9 of the Markit CDX North America Investment Grade Index in recent weeks, then selling the positions to the New York-based bank, according to three people outside the firms who are familiar with the strategy. JPMorgan tapped BlueMountain as a middleman after trades in its London chief investment office grew so large that the bank was creating price distortions that hedge funds sought to exploit, said the market participants, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to discuss the trades. BlueMountain was one of the funds that benefited from the price dislocations, the people said. 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Elliott, 39, responded by asking a few questions of his own, including whether the executive had invested in Russia after its 1998 currency crisis, in Argentina 10 years ago after the nation defaulted on its debt or in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX) in March 2009, when the benchmark plunged to its lowest point in 13 years. Finally, Elliott questioned whether the family office’s investment chief had ever bought shares of Apple. In all cases, the answer was no. “Then you are not qualified to be discussing Greece with me because you have missed the best investment opportunities over the past 20 years,” Elliott retorted. National Bank Of Greece To Sell Luxury Resort As Slump Bites (Bloomberg) If you know anyone who's interested: The 3.3 million-square-foot (307,000 square-meter) Astir Palace complex has already drawn investors’ interest, according to Aristotelis Karytinos, general manager of real estate at the lender. 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Opening Bell

Opening Bell: 7.29.21

Meme stock minimum; Di-delisting; crunch time for Credit Suisse; Twitter, Google step back; and more!

Opening Bell

Opening Bell: 2.19.16

China's top securities will step down; NYSE joins the 21st century; Credit Suisse faces money laundering probe; Drunk Motorist Was Driving Bar On Wheels; and more.