You just don't get it, do you? They're going to jail. Are you guys that dense? A govt sunk them on purpose, with a wink and a nod from our side. You can't figure that out.
Nice. Ass rape the naked shorts then rub their noses in it. Expecting more of this type of manuevering down the line.
It is clear that Porsche did not act alone on this one. Even Porsche's purchase of cash settled options on Volkswagen from 7 brokers seems a little odd. Some one really big is pulling out all the stops in going after SAC. The question remains, how much did they lose on Volkswagen?
Yep. They're doing really well. NOVEMBER 4, 2008 Six leave SAC's European arm By PHIL CRAIG | THE WALL STREET JOURNAL EUROPE * The European arm of SAC Capital Advisors, a $16 billion Connecticut hedge fund, saw six analysts leave last month. Analysts Jay Testa, Ashley Stuart, Christer Rundlof, Omer Tore, Ben Halfacre and Gabriel Marshank left SAC Global Investors, the name of the European arm. The fund also hired analyst Stephen Dove. The U.K.'s Financial Services Authority registered the changes last month. SAC declined to comment. The company's multi-strategy hedge fund fell 10.7% in September, according to estimates, and its largest fund fell 5% for the month, according to a person familiar with the fund's performance. Hedge funds fell 5.4% on average in September, according to Hedge Fund Research. Analysis by data provider Eurekahedge also found that most hedge funds in August were below their high-water marks, the level at which they could charge performance fees. Last month's staff changes came after several senior personnel changes over the past 12 months. Four equities and four fixed-income specialists have left the company this year. The bond managers left after SAC closed the fixed-income desk of its subsidiary Sigma Capital Management, which focuses on U.S. fixed income and debt. Over the same period, the firm hired Mike Corcell, a U.S. hedge-fund manager at U.K. asset-manager Threadneedle, and Ali Akay, an emerging-markets specialist at European fund manager HBK.
.......and guess who one of the defendants are. Forbes.com Companies, People, Ideas The Man Who Beat The Shorts Phyllis Berman 11.17.08 In the current economic meltdown Prem Wasta and his Fairfax Financial are among the few winners. Did short-sellers make the market go down? Maybe, maybe not. But here's one stock they tried, and failed, to send into a tailspin: Fairfax Financial Holdings. From Labor Day through Oct. 23, when the market fell 29%, Fairfax was up 18% on the New York Stock Exchange, from $216 to $255. Fairfax is an insurance company in Toronto that took in $4.5 billion last year in net premiums on policies that cover property and casualty or reinsure other insurers' liabilities. It is the creation of V. Prem Watsa, 58, an immigrant from India and an investing genius. If not a genius, he is one of the luckiest gamblers around. He's been bearish for several years and by January had 80% of his firm's $20 billion portfolio in cash and U.S. Treasurys. Despite, or because of, Watsa's history in building up Fairfax from the remnants of an almost busted trucking insurer that he took over in 1985, short-sellers figured that he would make a good target. They started spreading the theory that the rapidly growing firm was underreserved. The battle got ugly at times, if there's any truth to the accusations in a lawsuit Watsa filed in 2006 against his Wall Street enemies, charging them with market manipulation. Among those accusations, which are all denied: --Using the pseudonym P. Fate, unnamed individuals sent a package to the pastor of the church where Watsa presides over the investment committee, warning that Watsa's activities resembled those of convicted insurance felon Martin Frankel. --Hedge funds shorting Fairfax stock put out wild assertions that the company was the next Enron. --The shorts got someone to approach Fairfax's former chief financial officer, heavy-handedly threatening criminal prosecution if he didn't cooperate by revealing incriminating details. --On one day in June 2006 Fairfax Chief Financial Officer Greg Taylor fielded 41 telephone calls from investors checking out rumors they had heard: that the Mounties had raided the office, that the company was admitting fraud and that Watsa had fled the country with company assets. One caller even demanded Watsa be put on the phone to prove his presence. The suit, in New Jersey state court, is far from resolution (a trial is expected next year), but Fairfax go some vindication two months ago when one defendant, the brokerage firm Morgan Keegan, announced that it had fired its analyst covering Fairfax for having given advance word of negative reports to short-sellers and hedge funds. In the end, though, Watsa seems to be beating the shorts not with legal tactics but the old-fashioned way, by running a good company. Earnings per share shot up from $12 in 2006 to $58 in 2007, and in the first half of this year to $35. Since the shorts took on Fairfax in earnest starting in 2003, the stock has tripled. Born in India, Watsa graduated from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology and moved to western Ontario in 1972 at age 22. Penniless, he lived with relatives while getting his M.B.A. from the University of Western Ontario and moonlighting at night selling air conditioners and furnaces. After taking over, and renaming, an underwriter of trucking policies called Markel, he added a dozen property and casualty insurers, among them the well-known New Jersey firm Crum & Forster and TIG Holdings, once part of San Francisco's Transamerica. Taking over management of the investments, Watsa produced (according to Fairfax) a compound annual return from 1993 to 2007 on its stock portfolio of 19.5% (versus 10.4% for the S&P 500) and on its bond portfolio of 10.1% (versus 6.6% for a Merrill Lynch bond index). One of his earliest backers--and later a friend--was famed investor Sir John Templeton, who died this year at age 95. The short-seller interest in Fairfax dates to the early 2000s, when debt-laden acquisitions started to produce huge claims on policies written before Watsa's watch. Even when he was forced to shut down troubled acquisition TIG while turning around Crum, Watsa was able to pay claims with $1.4 billion worth of reinsurance he had acquired. He also raised $1.2 billion with share offerings for some of Fairfax's subsidiaries and Fairfax itself. The arm-wrestling with the shorts had Fairfax shares oscillating between $48 and $185 in the three and a half years before the company filed its lawsuit. "We have nothing against short-selling," Watsa says now. "We short stocks ourselves." And he takes bearish positions on other companies' debt. In 2003 and 2004 he spent $467 million on credit-default swaps against an assortment of borrowers, among them American International Group, Countrywide Financial and MBIA. So far Watsa has booked a $2.5 billion gain on those positions. Watsa's only sin was in being a little too early with his prediction that the era of credit expansion would end badly. This is what he said in Fairfax's 2003 annual report: "It seems to us that securitization eliminates the incentive for the originator of [a] loan to be credit sensitive. Prior to securitization, the dealer would be very concerned about who was given credit to buy an automobile. With securitization, the dealer (almost) does not care.â¦And here's the rub! These asset-backed bonds are rated based on their historical loss experience record which will likely be very different in the future--particularly if we experience difficult economic times."
who said einhorn was not hurt by VW because he was hedged long Porsche.... "Mr. Einhorn said the company's portfolio was hurt by a bet that carmaker Volkswagen AG's shares would sink while they rose dramatically. People who are familiar with Mr. Einhorn's hedge fund portfolio and the reinsurance company's portfolio say they are often very similar. " reuters
Doesn't that kinda blow your whole conspiracy-theory spiel outta the water, buddy? Let's face it - you can't short a great company to cheap prices, let alone into bankruptcy. The only stocks that can get raped by shorts are already down shit creek without a paddle - the Lehmans, Fannie Maes, Countrywides, AIGs and other centers of lying coporate shilling and malfeasance. Get your act together bud, you're propping up the crooked part of the establishment here, when you should be defending Honest Joe CEO.
Don't you think he might have hedged with some out of the money calls? Personally I never have on a short with some deep OTM calls in case of exactly this kind of scenario. Especially when a cash-rich corporate player in the same sector has already declared a 20%+ ownership position. If Cohen didn't hedge, then he is a stupid, bald, fat, old, overpriced shark-buying dumbass SOB.