UPDATE 1-Hedge fund woes don’t slow stock pickers’ meeting
* Big interest in rubbing shoulders with famous tradersBy Svea Herbst-Bayliss and Katya WachtelNEW YORK, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Poor performance does not seem
to be much of a hindrance when it comes to investors shelling
out thousands of dollars to hear famous hedge fund managers
share some of their wisdom about picking stocks.Beginning on Monday, some 600 people who have written big
checks will attend the 7th annual Value Investing Congress in
New York. The two-day event is a chance for investors,
lesser-known money managers and financial advisers to rub
shoulders with William Ackman, David Einhorn, Jim Chanos, Leon
Cooperman and other titans in the $2 trillion hedge fund
industry.This year’s conference, after offering some steep discounts
on tickets initially priced at $4,000, is fairly well-attended,
even though many of the featured speakers are nursing hefty
losses.In fact, the conference’s principal organizer, Whitney
Tilson, is the manager of T2 Partners, a small hedge fund that
is down 30 percent for the year. Ackman’s $10 billion Pershing
Square Capital Management is down 16 percent for the year.But those attending the conference did not seem to mind
that many of the speakers were having off-years. Maybe that has
something to with the fact the Value Investing Congress is
focused on managers who specialize in finding stocks that are
unloved with payoffs that can be years down the road.”Value investors tend to look longer ahead than a hedge
fund guy and maybe they are more forgiving,” said Jason
Slocock, a private investor who came from London.ANOTHER CUP OF JOEThen again, the biggest buzz during the first day of the
conference did not come from a manager identifying a beaten-up
stock to buy. It came when Greenlight Capital founder David
Einhorn, whose $8 billion fund is down 6 percent this year,
told the crowd about a stock he was betting against.Einhorn wowed the crowd with the news that his fund was
selling short shares of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc , a company that not too long ago was a darling stock
of the the hedge fund set. Some of the coffee company’s early
boosters included John Thaler’s JAT Capital and Philippe
Laffont’s Coatue Capital. William Danoff, a top mutual fund
manager at Fidelity Investments, also liked the stock.Green Mountain shares immediately plummeted 10 percent on
the news Einhorn was shorting it because of concerns about the
company’s accounting practices and business prospects.”If you get one usable idea it can pay off handsomely and
pay for conferences for the next 20 years,” said Allen Benello,
a portfolio manager at hedge fund White River Partners in San
Francisco.Still, the ideas being touted here are hardly exclusive as
they are now available not only to hundreds of other conference
attendees, but also to anyone with an Internet connection.
Indeed, news of Einhorn’s short bet was a hot topic on Twitter,
even as the manager was still going through his lengthy
presentation.Many at the conference were waiting for Tuesday’s
presentations when Ackman, one of the industry’s biggest stars,
is scheduled to speak.Chanos, a famed short-seller warned investors on Monday not
to simply chase a beaten down-stock believing it has hidden
value. His presentation to the paying crowd was called: “Beware
the global value trap!”Chanos, who runs Kynikos Associates, said: “If I can’t work
out how a company is making money after reading their 10K three
times, we open a file on it.”Other featured speakers included Cooperman, whose Omega
Advisors is down 12.36 percent, and Eminence Capital’s Ricky
Sandler, whose fund is off 6.53 percent this year. The list of
speakers even included Vladimir Jelisavic, co-founder of
Longacre Fund Management, a one-time $800 million fund that
recently announced plans to liquidate because of poor
performance.GENIUSES AMONG USEven with those sorry numbers, investors said the
conference offers attendees a chance to walk among greatness.”You have ideas here you don’t get in the office,” said
Brian Cann, who works at RBC DS Private Investment Management
in Ontario. “It is like when you can be sitting there for hours
and nothing happens and then you and your colleague go to the
pub and suddenly you have 42 new ideas.”Conference organizers said this year’s attendance beat last
year’s event. But organizers had to offer heavy discounts off
the original ticket price to woo people to come.
