Billionaire Chase Coleman's Tiger Global exited its big Apple bet last quarter while making a $148 million bet on Alphabet and investing $132 million in Microsoft.

In the fourth quarter of 2015, the firm made a $1.1 billion bet on Apple, and over the course of 2016 started shedding the shares, regulatory filings show. Tiger dropped $407 million in remaining shares of Apple in the fourth quarter of last year, filings show.

According to the 13F, Tiger made the following moves during the fourth quarter:

• It increased its stake in Priceline by 36%, holding a $1.84 billion stake at the end of the quarter
• It increased its stake in JD.com by 37%, holding a stake worth $1.16 billion
• It took a new position in Fiat valued at $481 million
• It took a new position in Alphabet valued at $147.5 million
• It took a new position in Microsoft valued at $131.6 million

Bloomberg analyzed the data based off of a regulatory filing that the $20 billion investment firm filed February 14.

The quarterly filing, called a 13F, lists the long stock positions of investment firms. The positions are current as of 45 days prior, so it is possible that Tiger Global has since changed its positions. 

Tiger Global Management invests in private and public markets and manages about $20 billion firmwide. The firm managed $5.9 billion in hedge fund assets as of mid-year 2016, according to the Hedge Fund Intelligence Billion Dollar Club ranking. 

SEE ALSO: A partner at $20 billion investment firm Tiger Global has left

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Trian Fund Management, the activist hedge fund cofounded by billionaire Nelson Peltz, has taken a stake in Procter & Gamble, The Wall Street Journal reports.

P&G's stock was up 4% in after-hours trading on the news.

Trian is the second activist hedge fund to invest in P&G in recent years. In 2012, Bill Ackman's Pershing Square invested, leading then-CEO Robert McDonald to step down within a year, the Journal reported.

P&G is the maker of everything from Gillette to Crest to Pantene to Tampax.

Peltz said in December that he had taken a new position but did not disclose which company it was in. His firm raised a special fund in recent months exclusively for its P&G position, according to the Journal report. 

A number of other hedge funds disclosed new positions in 13-F filings on Tuesday.

Read the full story in The Wall Street Journal»

SEE ALSO: JPMorgan's head IPO banker on what to expect in 2017

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Izzy Englander's $35 billion hedge fund firm made a big bet on Target.

The New York-based firm invested $175 million in the retailer in the fourth quarter of last year. It was the biggest new bet the fund made in the fourth quarter.

That info is based on a Bloomberg analysis of a regulatory filing that the $35 billion investment firm submitted on February 14.

The quarterly filing, called a 13F, lists the long stock positions of investment firms. The positions are current as of 45 days prior, so it is possible that Millennium has since changed its positions.

Millennium manages about $34.8 billion with more than 2,100 employees working across the US, Europe, and Asia, according to the firm’s website.

The firm has also just made a big hire for equity chief, bringing on Peter Santoro, Morgan Stanley's global head of stock trading, Business Insider earlier reported.

SEE ALSO: Morgan Stanley's global head of stock trading just quit to join a $35 billion hedge fund

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BOSTON, Feb 14 (Reuters) - The Massachusetts state pension fund, which invests roughly $5 billion in hedge funds, has pulled money out of Brevan Howard, one of the industry's most prominent firms, a spokesman for the pension fund confirmed on Tuesday.

The $62.7 billion pension fund has been invested with Brevan Howard since November 2011. The spokesman declined to say how much the pension fund had invested with Brevan Howard or when it first asked to get its money back.

Brevan Howard, whose Master fund once ranked among the industry's most widely sought investments, has been facing a steady stream of redemption notices as performance has been lackluster in the last few years.

Brevan Howard, which invests roughly $12 billion and makes bets on currencies, stocks and interest rates, ended 2016 with gains of 3 percent, following losses in 2014 and 2015. But its long-term record for the Massachusetts pension fund has been has been lackluster, gaining only an average 1.4 percent a year since 2011.

Some industry analysts say Brevan Howard, which posted strong returns until 2013, keenly felt the departure of star trader Chris Rokos, who left in 2012 and now runs his own fund.

Brevan Howard had been a darling of the U.S. pension fund community, but state funds in Rhode Island and New Jersey have been among those pulling money in recent months.

While some of these pension funds have decided to cut their allocations to hedge funds, Massachusetts is sticking with them. The pension fund's executive director and officer in charge of picking them say the Massachusetts fund is using hedge funds as investment vehicles, and that can protect on the downside.

Additionally, Massachusetts has been aggressively cutting costs by negotiating fees and demanding separately managed accounts where its money is not co-mingled with other investors. The pension fund is saving roughly $38 million a year by doing this.

The pension fund has also moved away from the big-name, established funds in favor of smaller newcomers. Last year the pension fund hired Land and Buildings Investment Management, based in Stamford, Connecticut, Informed Portfolio Management, based in Stockholm, and East Lodge Capital, based in London.

Last year, the Massachusetts pension fund earned an 8 percent return with its basket of more than two dozen hedge funds returning 4.4 percent. The HFRI Asset Weighted Composite Index gained 3.10 percent last year.

(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Phil Berlowitz and Leslie Adler)

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In her new book "Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street," author Sheelah Kolhatkar chronicles the incredible story of the biggest insider trading scandal in history. 

At the center of the scandal is Steve Cohen, the billionaire hedge fund manager who was not charged in the case that saw the closure of his firm SAC Capital. 

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A $14 billion hedge fund firm is predicting pain for retail and other sectors.

Canyon Capital Advisors, a Los Angeles-based hedge fund set up Joshua Friedman and Mitchell Julis, said in a January letter to investors that a number of sectors would feel the effects of tightening financial conditions.

The Federal Reserve's easing program, called quantitative easing, "cushioned many companies from the impact of broader business conditions by extending them a lifeline of low cost financing," Canyon wrote. But this "volatility-suppressing effect" should recede with the program's end and the Fed's move to push up interest rates, the firm added.

"There are a number of levered industries undergoing significant transformation that are likely to be more vulnerable going forward," the letter said. 

In particular, the fund is focused on the retail industry, according to the letter. More than a quarter (27%) of high yield retailer bonds are trading at distressed levels, Canyon said. That suggests the market is pricing in some kind of reorganization or bankruptcy. 

"Changes in consumption patters have put tremendous pressure on legacy retail business models," the Los Angeles-based hedge fund said in the letter. "Some of these companies have a reason to exist and will restructure their balance sheets; others will liquidate."

Per Canyon, other sectors that could struggle include:

• Health care– High yield "health care bonds are trading wider than the broader [high yield] market for the first time in nearly a decade...  There was only one default among [high yield] health care companies in 2016, but over 15% of the sector now trades at distressed levels."
• Media– "[P]olicy shifts, M&A, and technological disintermediation are resulting in significant changes to businesses and balance sheets. Encroachment by new entrants with lower costs of capital and different motivations (whether tech giants like Amazon or Apple, or blue chip communications companies like AT&T) is putting pressure on legacy media companies, many of which are highly leveraged."
• Energy –  "While the period of most acute distress may have passed, this is a sector undergoing a disruptive transition in both supply and demand dynamics and, in turn, corporate balance sheets. Accordingly, we expect there to be routine mispricing of risk and return in this area for the foreseeable future."

Canyon also wrote that the equity and credit markets are likely fully priced.

Canyon managed $14.2 billion in hedge fund assets as of mid-year 2016, according to the HFI Billion Dollar Club ranking. The Los Angeles-based hedge fund firm managed about $9 billion in its Value Realization fund at the start of this year, the letter said.

The Canyon Value Realization Fund, L.P. gained about 2 % net of fees for the fourth quarter of 2016, bringing the estimated return for 2016 to about 9%. Year to date through February 3, the fund was up an estimated 2.2% net of fees, according to the letter.

A Canyon media rep declined to comment. ValueWalk earlier reported on the letter.

SEE ALSO: A high-profile hedge fund sent a letter explaining all the reasons it lost money last year, and why it is going to do better this time

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Canyon Capital Advisors, a $14 billion Los Angeles-based investment firm set up Joshua Friedman and Mitchell Julis, sees a fresh money-making opportunity betting on corporate takeovers.

In a January letter to investors, the hedge fund firm said there has been a "significant increase in supply" of potential deals "as companies having difficulty growing organically have instead sought to buy growth."

At the same time, fewer investors are able to invest in these kinds of deals, which generally involves buying the stock of a company being acquired during a sale while selling off stock in the acquiring company.

Canyon cites the gutting of Wall Street banks' proprietary desks, which used to trade the banks' own money, and the travails of many event-driven hedge funds which have suffered and can't take big positions any more. 

Event-driven hedge funds, a strategy which encompasses betting on mergers, lost $38.3 billion in net assets last year, according to data tracker HFR. Hedge funds focusing on merger arbitrage returned 3.6%  last year, as per HFR.

SEE ALSO: Canyon Capital is sounding the alarm on distress in the retail sector

The strategy – in hedge fund jargon called risk or merger arbitrage – is risky since deals often fall through. In 2014, the Wall Street Journal referred to the phenomenon as "Arbageddon" after a slew of failed deals burned hedge funds like JANA Partners and Paulson & Co, which had bet big on certain takeovers.

Wall Street dealmaking can also go through ebbs and flows, with last year seeing a number of big deals fall through after record highs in activity a year prior. These kinds of strategies are also apt to being taken over by algorithms, which may be able to make the predictions better than human investors, the FT's Robin Wigglesworth reported last year.

Meanwhile, the wideness in deal spreads – the difference between a company's stock price and the price an acquiring company has agreed to pay – has "been compounded by policy risk, as the US government has taken an exceptionally aggressive stance against mergers in general for several years," Canyon added in its letter.

"The structural forces weighing on deal spreads, as well as the idiosyncratic and short duration nature of the investments, have made risk arb a fertile area for capital deployment (including on the debt side, where the up/downs can be far more grounded)," the firm added. 

Canyon has made betting on mergers one of its largest positions, increasing the strategy from 1% to 11% of its portfolio since the start of 2016, the letter said.

Canyon managed $14.2 billion in hedge fund assets as of mid-year 2016, according to the HFI Billion Dollar Club ranking. The Los Angeles-based hedge fund firm managed about $9 billion in its Value Realization fund at the start of this year, the letter said.

The Canyon Value Realization Fund, L.P. gained about 2 % net of fees for the fourth quarter of 2016, bringing the estimated return for 2016 to about 9%. Year to date through February 3, the fund was up an estimated 2.2% net of fees, according to the letter.

A Canyon media rep declined to comment. ValueWalk earlier reported on the letter.

SEE ALSO: A $14 billion hedge fund is sounding the alarm on distress in the retail sector

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Some of the biggest names in the investing world are backing a hot new hedge fund, according to people familiar with the situation.

Philippe Laffont, the founder of Coatue Management; Louis Bacon, the founder of Moore Capital; and Dan Loeb, the founder of Third Point, are planning to invest in Ben Melkman's Light Sky Macro, a New York hedge fund that is set to launch March 1.

Billionaire Steve Cohen, the founder of Point72 Asset Management, is also investing in the fund.

These are some of the biggest names in the hedge fund industry managing some of the largest funds. As of midyear 2016, Coatue managed $10.2 billion in hedge fund assets, Third Point managed $14.9 billion, and Moore managed $15 billion, according to the Hedge Fund Intelligence Billion Dollar Club ranking.

Cohen, whose firm SAC Advisors was banned from the industry after an insider-trading scandal, is well respected among hedge funders for his investing prowess. He now manages his fortune via his family office, Point72.

Melkman previously was a partner at Brevan Howard Asset Management, a Europe-based hedge fund titan that has been losing assets. Melkman's fund launch is expected to be one of this year's largest and will employ a macro strategy.

The fund is marketing a fee structure that lowers fees as assets rise. For instance, the fund's management fee starts at 1.5% and decreases to 1.25% when assets reach $1 billion and then to 1% if assets hit $2 billion, according to a person familiar with the situation who declined to be named.

Melkman did not return calls seeking comment in time for publication. Representatives for Loeb and Bacon declined to comment.

The fund is expected to launch with at least $400 million.

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A $3.7 billion hedge fund firm has some insight on how to hire top talent – look for malleable people.

In an investor letter dated this month, Tourbillon Capital Partners' Jason Karp wrote that his firm had looked at dozens of experienced candidates in recent months. The exercise was not particularly fruitful, however.

"There are a lot of bad values and habits out there that have been learned from this last regime," Karp wrote in the letter, a copy which was reviewed by Business Insider.

Instead, the New York firm is looking to hire more "malleable" recruits. Two MBA interns from the summer of 2016 are joining full time this summer, and the firm has just hired two more interns for the summer of 2017, according to the letter.

Hedge funds have long raced to find top talent. Legendary investor Steve Cohen said last year that he had trouble finding solid recruits. The billionaire's family office, Point72 Asset Management, has been running a training program for recent college grads.

Here's the full excerpt from the Tourbillon letter:

"Fortunately, we have found that some of this hedge fund tumult has created a ripe environment for talent. As such, we have interviewed and met with several dozen candidates in all areas of our investment team. We have found, however, that there are a lot of bad values and habits out there that have been learned from this last regime and consequently, we are focusing much more time on identifying malleable individuals.

The Tourbillon Global Master Fund returned -9.2% last year after posting a -1.8% drop for the fourth quarter of 2016, according to the letter.

"This was the worst year in my 18-year career," Karp wrote, adding that most of the underperformance was attributable to the first quarter.

Karp also wrote that the firm's flagship fund posted a 8.1% return with a 13.5% net market exposure from the second quarter through the end of the year – making the period "one of our better three quarter alpha periods since inception."

The firm manages about $3.7 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter who declined to be named because the information is private.

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NEW YORK, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Jeffrey Ubben, the chief executive officer of activist investor ValueAct Capital, told Reuters on Wednesday that his firm had been taking money out of the capital markets as valuations have become overextended, leaving it with $3 billion in cash.

"I really feel that the large-cap activist plays are very treacherous with high PEs (price-to-earnings) and not a lot of growth," Ubben said, speaking at the Reuters "Future of Shareholder Activism" event in New York.

Ubben said that he was not focusing on any particular sector but instead looking for bets on idiosyncratic, mid-sized companies such as spin-offs and "weird" corporate structures.

ValueAct, based in San Francisco, manages around $16 billion. The fund's largest holding is a $2.4 billion stake in Microsoft Corp, the software company where ValueAct partner Mason Morfit is also a board director.

Ubben also weighed in on the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, saying "everything about Trump I think is inflationary" while citing policies like a potential border tax. But he added that the looming increase in interest rates were more of a concern as a board member.

Ubben said he got "super lucky" with the Trump administration's proposed financial deregulation measures, which caused bank shares - including current ValueAct holding Morgan Stanley - to spike. He said he sold some shares in Morgan Stanley following its price increase.

On the coming initial public offering of Snap Inc, Ubben said that he has no problem with shares that do not initially have voting rights as long as they eventually allow for shareholders to have their say.

"I understand it," he said. "If that's what it takes to get growth companies public and let the public participate in high-growth companies."

Ubben was a fund manager at Fidelity and a managing partner at private equity firm Blum Capital before founding ValueAct in 2000.

Ubben is a long-time advocate of giving CEO's more stock-based compensation tied to the company's total shareholder return. In an opinion article he published in 2012, he said the TSR model can bring a healthy appetite for risk to boardrooms and encourage growth.

ValueAct disclosed earlier this month a 7.1 percent stake in pharmaceutical company Bioverativ Inc. The fund also has a $1 billion-plus stake in media company Twenty-First Century Fox Inc.

(Reporting by Lawrence Delevingne and Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Jennifer Ablan, Andrew Hay and Lisa Shumaker)

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You can add the $3.7 billion hedge fund Tourbillon Capital to the list of firms wary of betting on President Donald Trump's policies.

"The next four years will be filled with a very wide range of outcomes," Jason Karp, founder of Tourbillon Capital Partners, wrote in a February investor letter reviewed by Business Insider. "We can confidently say after hundreds of man hours of research that it is highly unpredictable and unknowable."

Karp said that making trades based on conviction over policy direction could lead to disasters like the one the investment world saw last year, "where many look genius and many look stupid because of a virtual coin toss."

He also quoted the French philosopher Voltaire: "Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one."

There are causes for concern, but there are also a bunch of reasons to be optimistic, he said.

Karp added: "We think there is plenty to be worried — which most people have adequately addressed — and plenty to be excited about — which few give airtime to because being optimistic is not as intellectual as being bearish, and optimism creates too much cognitive dissonance if you have issues with Trump."

With a new regime touting different tax, fiscal and regulatory policies, "the opportunity set has markedly improved," he said. "First, we are noticing much opportunity for separating facts from rhetoric."

The Tourbillon Global Master Fund returned -9.2% last year after posting a -1.8% drop for the fourth quarter of 2016, according to the letter.

"This was the worst year in my 18-year career," Karp said, adding that most of the underperformance was attributable to the first quarter.

Karp said the firm's flagship fund posted an 8.1% return with a 13.5% net market exposure from the second quarter through the end of the year, making the period "one of our better three quarter alpha periods since inception."

The firm manages about $3.7 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter, who declined to be named because the information is private.

SEE ALSO: Tourbillon interviewed dozens of job candidates, and what it discovered is damning

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A former Citadel money manager is gearing up for one of this year's biggest hedge fund launches.

Brandon Haley's Holocene Advisors is planning to launch with about $1 billion on April 3, according to people familiar with the situation.

The hedge fund firm is in capital raising mode, with Haley appearing at a Goldman Sachs emerging managers conference in Florida earlier this month, according to attendees.

Haley is expected to make a significant investment in the fund with his own capital. The firm will initially employ a stock strategy focused on the consumer, industrials and tech, media and telecommunications sectors.

Haley previously was Citadel's global head of equities from 2005 to 2015, according to a LinkedIn page.

The New York-based firm, which is located north of Madison Square Park, now has more than 20 employees. It hired Mitul Shah, a portfolio manager from Sol Kumin's Folger Hill, earlier this year, Business Insider reported.

Holocene joins Ben Melkman's Light Sky Macro as one of this year's most anticipated launches. The latter is expected to manage at least $400 million when it launches at the start of March.

Haley couldn't be reached for comment.

SEE ALSO: Some of the biggest names in the hedge fund industry are planning to invest in a hot new fund

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Warren Buffett is not a fan of hedge funds and the high fees they charge clients for the promise of outperformance. 

"When trillions of dollars are managed by Wall Streeters charging high fees, it will usually be the managers who reap outsized profits, not the clients," Buffett said in his annual shareholder letter published on February 25.

He added that by his rough calculation, investors have wasted about $100 billion over the past decade in the search for superior performance.

His contention is two fold: active hedge fund managers' fees crimp returns for their clients, and the promise of outperformance falls short when stacked against the S&P 500. 

In fact, the Berkshire Hathaway chairman is on track to win a $1 million bet he made in 2008 with Protégé Partners that the S&P 500 index would outperform a portfolio of funds of hedge funds. In the nine years since, the best-performing fund of funds has gained 62.8%, less than the 85.4% return that the S&P 500 index fund has earned. 

Buffett's position on this is somewhat paradoxical, since Berkshire's success is largely a result of Buffett and his team's ability to pick stocks.

In the letter, Buffett said his favorite recommendation for investing is a low-cost S&P 500 index fund. He also said Jack Bogle, the Vanguard Group founder considered to be the father of indexing, has done the most for American investors.

"I estimate that over the nine-year period roughly 60% – gulp! – of all gains achieved by the five funds-of-funds were diverted to the two levels of managers," Buffett said. "That was their misbegotten reward for accomplishing something far short of what their many hundreds of limited partners could have effortlessly – and with virtually no cost – achieved on their own."

Buffett added that if passive investors in the index are destined to achieve average results, before accounting for costs, so too would active, more expensive managers. However, it's the group with the lower costs that will win in the end, and the side with higher costs would see a more substantial shortfall. 

He said,

"There are no doubt many hundreds of people – perhaps thousands – whom I have never met and whose abilities would equal those of the people I’ve identified. The job, after all, is not impossible. The problem simply is that the great majority of managers who attempt to over-perform will fail. The probability is also very high that the person soliciting your funds will not be the exception who does well."

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One of this year's most anticipated hedge fund launches can count on another big time investor.

Jens-Peter Stein, cofounder of multi-billion hedge fund Stone Milliner Asset Management, is planning to make a small investment in Ben Melkman's Light Sky Macro, a new New York-based firm, according to people familiar with the situation.

Stein, a macro investor whose firm is based in the UK and Switzerland, has been serving as a reference to investors for Melkman, one of the people said. Stein previously worked at macro manager Moore Capital Management, whose founder, Louis Bacon, is also planning to invest in Melkman's fund, Business Insider previously reported.

Other prominent Wall Streeters that plan to invest include Dan Loeb, Philippe Laffont and Steve Cohen.

Melkman previously was a partner at Brevan Howard Asset Management, a Europe-based hedge fund titan that has been losing assets. Melkman's fund launch, said to be launching with at least $400 million, is expected to be one of this year's largest when it starts trading March 1. The firm will employ a macro investment strategy.

The fund is marketing a fee structure that lowers fees as assets rise. For instance, the fund's management fee starts at 1.5% and decreases to 1.25% when assets reach $1 billion, and then to 1% if assets hit $2 billion, Business Insider previously reported. The fund will also charge a performance fee of 18% per year after the fund makes 4% net, a person familiar with the matter said.

Overall, these fees are lower than the usual "2-and-20" fee structure that some hedge funds famously charge.

Light Sky Macro joins Brandon Haley's Holocene Advisors, which is targeting $1 billion when it launches next month, as one of the biggest hedge fund launches this year.

Melkman declined to comment.

SEE ALSO: Some of the biggest names in the hedge fund industry are planning to invest in a hot new fund

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One of Ken Griffin's portfolio managers has left Citadel, the $26 billion hedge fund titan, according to people familiar with the matter.

Karl Kroeker, who specialized in tech, worked nearly 14 years at Citadel and left earlier in February, according to one of the people. He was a portfolio manager in Citadel's Global Equities unit in San Francisco and has not yet been replaced, the person said.

The move follows Citadel shutting its Ravelin stock-picking unit, which was also based in San Francisco, earlier this year, and merging the teams within the unit with Global Equities.

“Citadel has decided to consolidate Ravelin Capital into our Citadel Global Equities business," a spokesman for Citadel told Business Insider at the time. "This decision will further strengthen Global Equities by incorporating the best ideas and strongest talent from Ravelin.”

Three units remain at Citadel: Surveyor, Global Equities and Aptigon.

Citadel, which is headquartered in Chicago and was founded by billionaire Ken Griffin, is one of the US' biggest hedge fund firms. The company managed $24 billion as of mid-year 2016, according to the Hedge Fund Intelligence Billion Dollar Club ranking. The firm now manages about $26 billion, one of the people said.

Kroeker couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

SEE ALSO: Ken Griffin has shut down one of Citadel's stock-picking units

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Ray Dalio, who oversees the world's biggest hedge fund firm, is stepping down from management amid a company-wide shake-up.

Dalio will stop managing Bridgewater Associates by mid-April, according to a client note Wednesday reviewed by Business Insider. Dalio said in the note that he had "temporarily stepped back into management" 10 months ago to help transition Greg Jensen's co-CEO role.

Dalio will remain co-chief investment officer along with Bob Prince and Jensen. Dalio wrote that he expected "to remain a professional investor at Bridgewater until I die or until those running Bridgewater don't want me anymore."

Bridgewater is the world's biggest hedge fund firm, managing about $103 billion in its hedge funds as of midyear 2016, according to the HFI Billion Dollar Club ranking.

Bridgewater's culture is known for being unusual and difficult. In its world of "radical transparency" and "radical truth,"employees rate one another's performance in real time on proprietary iPad apps, and nearly all meetings are recorded to be available for scrutiny. The company reports that 30% of employees leave within their first two years.

A slew of other changes were also announced in the client note:

• "David McCormick will be stepping up to join Eileen Murray in the co-CEO role."
• Jon Rubinstein is leaving Bridgewater after 10 months (he was previously also co-CEO) because he did not fit into Bridgewater's culture, Dalio wrote. Rubinstein, who previously worked for Apple's Steve Jobs, will continue to advise the firm.
• "Osman Nalbantoglu (who has been at Bridgewater for nine years) continues to run our portfolio implementation and trading/execution areas, and eight of our key investment research associates will step up into senior researcher roles."
• "Carsten Stendevad, the former CEO of the large Danish pension fund ATP, is joining Bridgewater as part of our new 'Bridgewater Senior Fellowship Program,' which will bring highly distinguished individuals into Bridgewater for a year to explore what our culture is like and lend their expertise and insights to our organization."
• "John Megrue joined me as a co-chairman on January 1st. John has been a leader in the private equity industry for over 30 years and is currently chairman of Apax Partners US."

Bridgewater has now posted the full memo to clients on LinkedIn.

SEE ALSO: The new co-CEO of hedge fund giant Bridgewater worked for Steve Jobs for 16 years — here's why Ray Dalio hired him

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What more does the market want from Valeant Pharmaceuticals?

The stock fell over 5% during Friday's trading day. The news of the day, though, was that the company had completed a $1.3 billion asset sale to L'Oreal, something investors were clamoring for during the company's earnings call on Tuesday, as Valeant is holding around $30 billion in debt and could use the cash from some asset sales.

So, it's interesting that despite making a move that investors were looking for, the company is still getting punished.

It's generally been a rough week for Valeant.

On Tuesday, the embattled company beat earnings expectations narrowly, but still fell 14%.

Then on Wednesday, the stock fell around 5% with the release of its 10K and erroneous reports that an ongoing SEC insider trading investigation was new.

In other words, it currently takes very little to push down a stock that was once a darling of Wall Street. Valeant was a hedge fund parking lot that could claim billionaire Bill Ackman of Pershing Square as its number one cheerleader until October of 2015.

That's when accusations of accounting malfeasance from short sellers and government scrutiny over the company's drug pricing practices made it the poster child for America's anger at the pharmaceutical industry. One CEO, several Congressional hearings, and many investigations and lawsuits later, its stock price now hovers around $13, down from a high of around $257.

SEE ALSO: Bill Ackman's nightmare stock can do no right

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Billionaire Ray Dalio just went off on the New York Times again – this time at one of the newspaper's own events.

"I'd like to talk about the ridiculous New York Times article," Dalio told moderator and Times' editor Charles Duhigg in response to his question about how he handles criticism. Dalio is the founder of Westport, Conn.-based Bridgewater Associates, the world's biggest hedge fund with about $103 billion in assets. 

Dalio was referring to an article that the Times ran earlier this week that detailed a case in which Dalio fired at least one staffer via a company-wide email and an instance where the company had employees review a video challenging whether a senior executive had lied.

Asked about his opinion that the story had been "miscovered," Dalio said: "Worse than that, it was intentionally done."

"There are journalists, writers who are intended to be, let's call them investigative reporting," Dalio added later in the talk. "And they're supposed to come out with things that they think are scandalous. And as a result of doing that, they kind of weave together things in ways that are meant to be, like, they say, good news that doesn't sell. So it's meant to be that way. So in the interactions that I've had with 'em, there has not been a desire to get at truth."

Dalio didn't specifically dispute any facts in the Times story, and a spokeswoman for the paper said it stands by its story.

Criticizing the media has become something of a passion for Dalio. In early January, he wrote a 2,700-word post on LinkedIn about a Wall Street Journal story about Bridgewater, and last year wrote a separate LinkedIn post that called a different New York Times report "a distortion of reality."

Last week, when the company announced that it was changing up its management team, he published the memo announcing the change on LinkedIn. Dalio wrote that he had made that decision because "our communications often find their way into the media in distorted ways."

The news reports about Dalio all dig into Bridgewater's unique and highly scrutinized culture — which includes the recording of nearly all staff conversations to make them available to other employees in a policy he calls radical transparency. Dalio addressed this at the conference and compared the practice to nudist camps.

"Ninety-nine percent of the meetings are taped for everybody to see," Dalio said.

"Not everyone wants to stand naked in front of everybody," he later added. "It's a little bit like going into a nudist camp for the first time. I don't know if you've ever gone into a nudist camp, but in other words, you first walk into a nudist camp and it's very awkward... If you can stand naked in front of other people and have them stand naked in front of you, you can have actually better relationships and be more productive."

Bridgewater manages about $103 billion in hedge fund assets as of midyear 2016, according to the HFI Billion Dollar Club ranking.

You can watch a recording of Dalio's comments here.

SEE ALSO: Ray Dalio slams Wall Street Journal story on Bridgewater, linking it to 'fake and distorted news epidemic'

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Good morning. Amid headlines of doom, gloom, and confusion in Washington, billionaire hedge fund manager David Tepper is long.

"I don't think the market's cheap," he told CNBC on Wednesday morning, "but you can't be short in that kind of environment."

And this environment, he says, is a stabilized China, a steady Japan, a growing US, and a calendar with no troubling macro events in sight, aside from the French election.

"Not one more regulation is happening and ... you have tax cuts coming here," he said. "So unless there's a mess-up in the administration ... Unless that happens, nothing's going to get in the way until inflation starts picking up."

When it does, the Fed will tighten (as by Tepper's estimation, it should have been doing more aggressively up to now).

And risks? What risks? Tepper thinks the administration has gotten past starting a trade war with China. And while Trump's new immigration ban isn't palatable to him personally, he thinks it's fine for markets. He's hoping for peace with Mexico.

Other than that ... gravy.

A few more key points from the interview:

• Tepper thinks it should be easy for Republicans to get tax reform through the legislature.
• He thinks far-right candidate Marine Le Pen will win the French election. He also thinks, however, that her rival Emmanuel Macron could be a positive for the economy.
• Tepper went long pharmaceutical companies like Mylan, Pfizer and Teva, according to recent government filings. He said it was mostly a play on Allergan and his belief that those stocks fell too far in the fall. He also seemed unsure on his Teva bet, saying, "Sometimes I think it's cheap, and sometimes I look at it and I wonder why it's in my book."
• He's short bonds and long European equities ("I may lose my behind").
• He thinks the border adjustment tax being floated by House Republicans could be good for the American economy as long as it's implemented over five years: "It's not that complicated ... and it doesn't necessarily mean that Americans pay more." Tepper is fully confident that "Paul Ryan and his friends" will carry it out intelligently.
• He has an "interest" in Snap and bought some in the IPO, but he wants the stock to go lower.
• Tepper has a dog named Benji. Tepper described it as some kind of Yorkie/Shih Tzu something ... Sounds ferocious.

All in all, Tepper's super bullish. He even chastised everyone on the down. "Everyone has to be on the negative side of life," Tepper complained to the "Squawk Box" crew.

SEE ALSO: There's a new most dangerous man in global economics

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