Nickname: miltthestilt

Review: in my quest for hedge fund secrets, I came across 2 great books about this..Hedge Fund Trading Secrets Revealed by Robert Dorfman and Confessions of a Street Addict by Jim Cramer...you will learn alot from these 2

Date reviewed: Oct 25, 2008 6:19 PM

Nickname: miltthestilt

Review: in my quest for hedge fund secrets, I came across 2 great books about this..Hedge Fund Trading Secrets Revealed by Robert Dorfman and Confessions of a Street Addict by Jim Cramer...you will learn alot from these 2

Date reviewed: Oct 25, 2008 6:19 PM

Nickname: Anonymous

Review: If hedge fund trading is so secretive, then why all the fuss about public, intrusive, attention getting publicity and investor solicitation. Does this mean that Mr. Goldstein wants it both ways?

Date reviewed: May 14, 2008 6:50 AM

Nickname: GoPhil Go

Review: Ben S, You should be on Goldstein's side on this. Why stop at the 13F disclosures? If it helps you so much, it would also be a "very valuable tool" if the SEC compelled managers to let you have unrestricted access to all their books and records. Arguing in favor of 13F disclosures because it makes your job easier, while ignoring the fact that they do hamper your clients' returns is just...I don't know, dumb?

Date reviewed: Dec 6, 2007 9:27 PM

Nickname: Surini

Review: He is aggressively buying up closed end funds that trade at discounts to their net asset value (NAV) and trying to open them up to capture the discount as immediate profit. It seems to me that if more people imitate him and put on the same position, he is more likely to succeed. If people follow his lead, then it also is in their best interest to have the discounts eliminated. Being an activist shareholder is easy when copy-cat people join your team.

Date reviewed: Jun 5, 2007 7:03 PM

Nickname: Phillip Goldstein

Review: What definition of trade secret is Ben S. using? A trade secret is defined very broadly. In general, it is any valuable commercial information that provides a business with an advantage over competitors who do not have that information. The positions of a money manager seem to fit within that definition. Once a position secret is publicly disclosed, it loses all its value. Any money manager that would not prefer to keep his holdings secret is probbaly not a very good one.

Date reviewed: Sep 19, 2006 8:42 PM

Nickname: Ben S.

Review: As an institutional investor with several billion dollars under management in external accounts, the 13F is a very valuable tool for us to fulfill our fiduciary responsibility to clients. These clients include pension funds, endowments, and corporate capital. The 13F allows us to monitor the holdings of our external managers and ensure that their monthly reports accurately reconcile with SEC filings -- an additional third party check if you will. Additionally, I do not believe a holdings list of public securities fulfills the legal definition of a trade secret. 13F filings are generally posted with a 45 day lag (SEC's time limit to file) so the information can be stale; moreover, a manager's true edge is their ability to trade their positions effectively in hopes of beating their benchmark. Given that an SEC mandate is to protect investors, and in many cases these investors are beneficiaries of pension plans, I believe the 13F is necessary and well within the SEC's mandate.

Date reviewed: Sep 14, 2006 4:54 PM

Nickname: No dummy

Review: Exactly Zeus.

Date reviewed: Sep 14, 2006 3:26 PM

Nickname: Bumblebee

Review: I love the work he is doing! Clearly he is good at it, not to mention passionate in taking on the SEC.

Date reviewed: Sep 14, 2006 2:57 PM

Nickname: ZEUS

Review: Phillip Goldstein is naked shorting stocks and it's illegal!

Date reviewed: Sep 13, 2006 6:51 PM