Who is speaking this year and at what time
It's time for the 24th annual Ira Sohn conference in New York. It's a charitable gathering of some of the biggest hedge fund titans where they will share their latest ideas. The stocks -- especially if they're not well known -- tend to pop on the recommendations and sink on short calls.
All times Eastern:
12:05 pm - David Einhorn
12:20 pm - Ryan Heslop
12:35 pm - Laura Deming
12:50 pm - Dr Joon Yun
1:05 pm - Larry Robbins
1:25 pm - intermission
2:10 pm - Christopher Hansen
2:25 pm - Michael Moritz & Patrick Collison
2:55 pm - Bihua Chen
3:20 - Spencer Glendon
Read about the speakers here.
Here were what the morning speakers recommended:
I track these ideas each year and the results have been sketchy at best. Last year was particularly bad and the WSJ has made a mockery of them by destroying their returns by throwing darts at a stock list and beating them by almost 27%.
Here's the recap from 2015 Sohn when David Einhorn made a fantastic call on shorting shale. For me that's the best and most memorable call ever because the timing and thesis were bang on.
Back in 2016, Nick Danaher of Domando Capital Management said Tripadvisor is an easy double, and a possible multi-bagger but it's still down 11% since he said that.
At the same conference, Stanley Druckenmiller said the stock bull market was exhausted and he was bullish on gold. That wasn't a great call.
Jeffrey Smith of Staboard Value argued for Depomed as an acquisition. It's down 71% since and changed its name to Assertio but his call for Westrock was a big winner for a period, gaining as much as 71% but it's now back to flat.
David Einhorn had a pair trade that was short CAT and long GM. It was a disaster.
A winner was Hyatt hotels, which was pitched by John Koury and is up 53% since. In 2018 he also pitched D.R. Horton, which is up 2.5%.
One guy who was there the past three years but won't be there again this year is Chamath Palihapitya. He gets a bit of heat because he's pitched some names that everyone knows. He touted Amazon in 2016 and it's up 189% since. In 2017, he was all about Tesla but it's down around 20% since and the convertible bonds have struggled. Last year he made a great pitch for Box but it's down 12%.
2017 results
Debra Fine, Founder and President of Fine Capital Partners pitched Canada's DHX Media, it went on to fall 65% but has rallied lately and is almost back to breakeven.
Bill Ackman went back to real estate with a call for Howard Hughes. It was up 10% in the year afterwards but is down 12% now.
Keith Meister recommended CenturyLink but it's down 52% since.
The best call was a Frontier Communication short from Josh Resnick. It fell hard on the call but has continued to fall down to $2.08 from $44.00.
Brad Gerstner touted United Airlines and it's was down 4% in the year ahead but it's now up 16%.
David Einhort touted Core Labs and it was up 8% in the year after but it's fallen apart since October and is down 46%.
Solid picks that year were from Larry Robbins, who will be back this year. He touted three stocks and all of them did well in the year ahead -- DXC (+32%), FMC (+13%) and IQV (+18). However it's been a rocky picture for DXC in the past year and it's now down 21% from when he made the call while FMC is only up 4%. IQV has continued to rise and is up 64%.
All and all, this is as big of a roll of the dice as randomly picking a stock. The only strategy is to be very quick on the pops and sell in a few hours but that's a tough way to make money. The shorts tend to work better than the longs.