Update: Bad link fixed.
From ZeroHedge:
Jim Grant, author of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, first hinted last week that not all is well when it comes to the world's biggest hedge fund, Ray Dalio's $160 billion Bridgewater (of which one half is the world's biggest risk-parity juggernaut). Speaking to Bloomberg last week, Dalio said he was "bearish" on Bridgewater because founder Dalio has become "less focused on investing, while the firm lacks transparency and has produced lackluster returns."
Grant slammed Dalio's transition from investor to marketer, and in a five-page critique of the world’s largest hedge fund, said Dalio has been preoccupied with his new book, sitting for media interviews and sending Tweets.
Grant continued his scathing critique, accusing Bridgewater of "lately performed no better than the typical hedge fund.” Grant is right: since the start of 2012, Bridgewater’s Pure Alpha II Fund has posted an annualized return of 2.5% vs its historic average of 12%, and is down 2.8% this year through July.“Such activities have one thing in common: They are not investing,” Grant writes in the Oct. 6 issue of his newsletter. “Yet here he is, laying it all out to the world again, Tweeting, promoting his book, attacking the press -- necessarily doing less of his day job than he would otherwise do.”
The underperformance may be explainable: after all the polymath billionaire has been busy opining in recent months on subjects from the rise of populism to his affinity for China, "which are distraction from making money" Grant said.
But if Grant had limited himself to merely Dalio's stylistic drift, it would be one thing: to be sure, the fund's billionaire founder may simply have lost a desire to manage money and has instead discovered a flair for writing books and being in the public spotlight.
However, Grant - or rather his colleague Evan Lorenz - went deeper, and as he writes in the latest Grants letter, he raises several troubling points, which go not to the hedge fund's recent underprofmrance - which can be perfectly innocuous - but implicitly accuse the world's biggest hedge fund of borderline illegal activities and, gasp, fraud. Some of the more troubling points brought up by Lorenz are the following:...MUCH MORE
And so on. There is much more in the full Grant's note, transcribed below which everyone who has even a passing interest in Bridgewater should read (and of course subscribe to Grant's, which together with 13-D, are the two best newsletters on Wall Street).
- Bridgewater has directly lent money to its auditor, KPMG, to which KPMH's response is that “these lending relationships . . . do not and will not impair KMPG’s ability to exercise objective and impartial judgment in connection with financial statement audits of the Bridgewater Funds.”
- Bridgewater has 91 ex-employees working at its custodian bank, Bank of New York.
- Only two of Bridgewater's 33 funds have a relationship with Prime Brokers. In these two funds, Bridgewater Equity Fund, LLC and Bridgewater Event Risk Fund I, Ltd., 99% of the investors are Bridgewater employees.
- Opaque ownership concerns: "Two entities—Bridgewater Associates Intermediate Holdings, L.P. and Bridgewater Associates Holdings, Inc.—are each noted as holding 75% or more of Bridgewater."
- Why the massive, and expensive, ETF holdings: "The June 30 13-F report shows U.S. equity holdings of $10.9 billion. The top-16 holdings, worth $9.5 billion, or 87% of the reported total, come wrapped in ETFs, including the Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets ETF, the SPDR S&P500 ETF Trust and the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF. Beyond the fact that Bridgewater reports holding few U.S. equities, you wonder why such a sophisticated shop would stoop to such a retail stratagem. Surely the Bridgewater brain trust could replicate the ETFs at a fraction of the cost that the Street charges."
- And perhaps most troubling, is the SEC in cahoots with Bridgewater? "Lorenz asked the SEC how Bridgewater’s answers comply with the requirement to “[p]rovide your fee schedule.” Via email, the agency replied, “Decline comment, thanks.”
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The face on the Wall Street milk carton
Ray Dalio, founder, chairman and co-chief investment officer of Bridgewater Associates, L.P., is going public—personally. He has written a book, given a TED talk, sat for interviews, dueled with journalists (or, as he styles them, “journalists”) and paid money—actually paid—to promote his tweets. Such activities have one thing in common: They are not investing....
