There’s a clown at the Reuters news desk with an ax to grind, a Hillary photograph to shine, and a distinct lack of understanding how people with extreme wealth manage their finances. It’s probably because this ‘journalist’ do-gooder multi-culturalist, who feels it’s his duty to defeat Trump, for the sake of indigenous people everywhere. Feeling anything at all was his first mistake. His second mistake was pissing me off with this story.
Both Reuters and Yahoo Finance are running headlines, depicting Trump as a bad businessman, because, get this, HIS INVESTMENTS IN CERTAIN HEDGE FUNDS LOST MONEY THIS YEAR AND LAST. That’s right, you’re now considered to be a bad businessman when you have 1% of your net worth with hedge fund managers who lost you money. So if you send your broker money and the market goes down, and you lose money as a result, you’re the bad businessman, not the broker?
The fuck sort of world am I living in.
Here is the drivel, in its entirety. First, entreat yourselves to see at how they framed the headlines.
And Yahoo Finance.
Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is built on his business acumen. But some of the Wall Street funds that he has invested in have proven less successful, underperforming industry benchmarks in the last 15 months, according to a Reuters examination.
Eighteen out of 21 hedge funds and mutual funds in Trump’s portfolio lost money in 2015, and 17 of them are down so far this year, according to public disclosures and private performance data seen by Reuters.
The funds managed by Paulson & Co, BlackRock Inc, Baron Capital and others lost an average of 8.5 percent last year, according to Reuters calculations, whereas stock market and hedge fund industry benchmarks broke even or came close to it. Trump’s funds are down another 2.9 percent so far this year, underperforming many benchmarks again.
The performances in part reflect broader weaknesses in the investing climate. The last 15 months have been difficult for many portfolio managers amid volatile stock markets, tumbling oil and commodity prices, and an economic slowdown in China.
Trump defended his holdings in an interview with Reuters, saying he invested in the funds three or four years ago and they have done well over time.
“I put some money with people that are friends,” the New York businessman said by phone on Monday, without naming names.
“I have no idea if they are up or down. I just know that they have been very good over a period of time,” added Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination for the November presidential election.
Representatives for Baron, BlackRock and Paulson declined to comment.
To be sure, some of Trump’s funds have performed well this year. For instance, Gabelli Funds’ GAMCO Global Gold, Natural Resources & Income fund, a closed-end vehicle, has gained 16.27 percent through March 22, beating a benchmark return of 15.89 percent for natural resource funds, according to net asset value data from Morningstar.
Another fund that Trump has invested in, the Invesco European Growth Fund, gained 4.82 percent last year versus a benchmark loss of 5.66 percent, according to Morningstar.
Gabelli and Invesco declined to comment. Both funds are listed as small holdings within Trump’s broader brokerage accounts.
SOME FUNDS OUTPERFORMED
The 21 funds examined by Reuters were among 23 funds that Trump disclosed last year in a July 15 filing with the Federal Election Commission. The performance of two of the funds could not be discerned.
The Reuters review included performance data publicly disclosed by 14 mutual funds, as well as performance data on seven hedge funds seen in confidential fund reports or shared by people familiar with those firms.
Trump told Reuters the funds are a tiny part of his investment portfolio.
“I do very little hedge funds business. I for the most part don’t believe in it,” he said.
The 23 funds were worth as much as $120.75 million, according to the FEC filing, a fraction of Trump’s self-proclaimed net worth of more than $10 billion.
While Trump selected the funds, their managers are responsible for choosing securities to invest in and the funds’ subsequent performance.
Some investing experts who looked at Trump’s portfolio and Reuters’ compilation of their performance were not impressed, saying he could have earned better returns by investing in other hedge funds.
For instance, Reuters previously reported that Millennium Management’s main Millennium International fund gained 12.65 percent in 2015, while Citadel gained 14.3 percent in its main multi-strategy hedge funds.
“By the looks of it, Mr. Trump’s investing prowess is very pedestrian,” said Brian Shapiro, chief executive of Simplify LLC, which tracks and analyses alternative investments like hedge funds.
“For someone who prides himself on being surrounded by the best talent,” added Brad Alford, an investment advisor and CEO of Alpha Capital Management, “I’m surprised to see so few winners.”
To be sure, some of Trump’s funds that fell in 2015 have fared better in previous years. For instance, BlackRock’s Obsidian fund has averaged annual returns of 3.39 percent over the last five years, according to a person familiar with the performance.
Obsidian fell 6.17 percent in 2016 through March 11, while other comparable funds rose 0.69 percent, according to a private client report by HSBC’s Alternative Investment Group seen by Reuters. BlackRock declined to comment.
“You can’t measure it in a short time. I’m way up with BlackRock. I’m way up with Obsidian,” Trump told Reuters, without elaborating further.
Trump disclosed a $27.6 million stake in Obsidian in May 2015, his largest fund holding. It is unclear when Trump first invested in Obsidian, which bets on corporate and government bonds, along with interest rates and other securities.
Obsidian was burned by a slide in oil and other commodities, according to a February BlackRock client note seen by Reuters.
PAULSON LOSSES
Trump’s stable of funds include two Angelo, Gordon & Co hedge funds, three Paulson & Co hedge funds, and 11 Baron Capital mutual funds. The mutual funds are open to virtually anyone, but hedge funds are only accessible to those that meet minimum wealth requirements, which typically include a net worth of more than $1 million.
A representative for Angelo, Gordon & Co did not respond to a request for comment.
Baron’s billionaire founder, Ron Baron, is known for long-term bets on companies and an optimistic world view.
Trump uses 11 Baron vehicles with different investment strategies, including small-cap stocks, real estate and emerging markets. Nine of the funds lost money in 2015, with one energy and resources vehicle falling nearly 32 percent, according to data compiled by Morningstar. Nine are down this year through March 22 with single-digit losses.
Baron’s long-term track record is better. The firm’s best-known Baron Growth Fund has gained an average of about 8.6 percent annually over the last five years.
Paulson’s funds have produced a mixed performance in recent years. Led by New York billionaire John Paulson, the firm became famous for its prescient bet on the collapse of the subprime mortgage market leading up to the financial crisis.
But in 2015, the three Paulson funds used by Trump all fell, according to data provided by an investor to Reuters. One of the funds, the Paulson Advantage Plus fund, had declined an average of about 22 percent every year over the last five years, according to a confidential fund report seen by Reuters.
Trump’s filing to the FEC lists myriad business ventures, including holdings in hotels and golf properties, as well as individual stocks such as Apple Inc, Goldman Sachs and Altria Group. (Click here for filing: here)
Trump told Reuters his stock picks have done well recently.
“I bought them low and I sold them high,” he said, referring to a series of sales in January 2014 that netted more than $27 million.
“It was very good timing,” he added. “I hit the market exactly perfectly.”
Look how long this article is. This little trollop spent a long time writing this evergreen piece of meaningless offal. Shame on Reuters.
This is the author. He looks like a very nice boy.
my account is what you might call flat. shame on you bears. turn in your Ark passes.
HEYYYY i’m back in SHAK low 32’s. why not. i really should go to the local store. hmmm
These kind of ridiculous articles just makes me want to vote for him more and more and more.
The explanation is simple. Trump was too busy selling his condos to rich Muslims who finance ISIS and the wealthy Red Chinese who are hacking US companies. Or maybe he got distracted while reading the copy of My New Order he kept on his night table according to Ivana. No big deal.
LOL. Seriously, though, you make a valid point in that there are serious reasons one could have for criticizing Trump, but none of them are in that article.
Well, folks, be aware that various news media outlets are no more fair to Bernie or Hillary or Obama, than they are to Trump.
The standard “journalism” formula is this: Assume that Trump/Hillary/Bernie/Obama is weak, a loser, stupid, the Anti-Christ, hates America etc. and then reason backwards in order to find evidence to prove that assumption.
So this well intentioned young boy is likely doing the job assigned to him by his supervisors: Find evidence for Trump being, or seeming to be, a loser in some way. This is why our culture in the U.S. is flawed and needs to change. We are too career oriented and money and greed oriented, at all costs. But this young man is probably not even making much money at his career, such as it is.
We need to have higher principles than just making money or doing our jobs, whatever they may be. We need to be mindful of what is fair to others and our community. And if our job is to pollute the air and water, or to make flames full of fracking chemicals come out of people’s water taps, or to pollute the Internets with shoddy “journalism”, then we need to find or make other jobs for ourselves and each other– jobs that make a contribution, rather than screw everything up.
I like vox.com as my favorite news source right now, because they usually make attempts to be fact oriented and objective. They can be too politically correct sometimes, which is irritating. But they give it a good try. And they really educate you with a lot of little known facts on issues.
But Trump supporters reading vox would need to be aware that the folks at vox do not like Trump. However, they do give their exact reasons for disapproving of him. And it’s not because of something totally stupid, such as that some hedge fund he has invested in lost money. In fact, they seem to have come by their opinions honestly, whether those opinions are right or wrong. I do not think they used this commonly used “journalism” practice of assuming that someone is a loser, evil, stupid etc., and then working backwards to come up with a reason to justify their assumption.
The bottom line is this.
Journalism is dead in the USA and has been for some time.
What we have now is advocacy Journalism be it NY Times, NPR/PBS, Washington Times, USA Today or whatever.
They all want to play “gotcha” games.
This is why in part (also due to age of internet, social media, etc.) why real journalism is dead.
I would say journalism ended around the ’70s with Woodward and Bernstein.
I believe they deserve to be treated like cattle in Hillary’s rope line and as chucklehead punch lines by Trump.
I agree that the state of journalism is bad. But our standard American habit lately of calling people or an institution evil, does not solve anything, even when it is true. Further down here on this thread, I have my questions about how can we improve the state of journalism, so that it does not deserve to be treated like cattle or as chucklehead punch lines.
Journalism is in a sorry state. But a free and effective press that informs the public well, is essential to a well functioning democracy. Let’s not give up on ever having a well functioning democracy. Our democracy is a treasure, the envy of many people the world over. How can we move it forward rather than letting it deteriorate and go backward?
this here democracy is a sham-democracy, a psuedo-democracy
if big money doesn’t get there way through their media brainwashing campaign, they resort to other age-old tricks like murder, arson, theft, sabotage, subterfuge, vote-rigging, etc etc
if that don’ work, they stage a bananna republic-like coup d’etat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2agPurqFJk
Switzerland has the closest thing to a true democracy on this planet but it still leaves much to be desired
Juice, so how do we change that. Certainly overturning Citizens United would be a good first step, in my book. How do we become like Switzerland and then go even beyond that.
Let’s all take some prozac, or get a better diet and more aerobic exercise to get the endorphin good mood chemicals going. Or do whatever it takes, to stop feeling depressed and hopeless, and start thinking of possible solutions. These folks are the .01%. There are a LOT more of us than there are of them.
jes, frog
no money should be involved in the process .. no advertising, propaganda, etc ..
the .01% has 90% of the wealth, arms, power, therefore persuasive influence
he got his 10 mins. We’re going to hell, and I am holding the velvet rope.
Written by an asshat that has never run any money of any consequence. At least he can afford a new pleather chair from Staples with his clickbait earnings
That guy went to Yale right? Tax those endowments and send him and his kind to public schools. Maybe they’d become semi decent journalists instead of pro bloggers.
The problem here is the system, not individuals. Journalists certainly can’t be accused of being greedy having to make tons of money and destroying our society in the process. There are certainly people who do that, from water and air and earth and food polluters to white collar financial criminals like Madoff. But not the poorly paid journalists.
The problem is that it is hard to make money in journalism today. And businesses that don’t make money don’t survive. And they do not attract the sharpest people to work in them. So philanthropists need to start nonprofit truth oriented news and investigative journalism organizations, knowing that they will not make money but will help the public and the nation. Or else a way has to be found for news organizations to make money without prostituting themselves with click bait articles, without producing entertainment only with no actual relevant facts.
I know that the American culture believes we are all only individuals and that groups or systems are irrelevant. But that is not so. The problem is not individual journalists, who are just like everyone else, trying to do the job that is assigned to them. A news and media system which should be delivering facts and news to the public, a free press, is essential to a well functioning democracy. We don’t have a well functioning democracy. And the absence of a well functioning fairly objective and fact oriented press/media is a large part of the reason why.
How can we expect to effectively counteract terrorism, and to solve our domestic problems, if we can’t even get accurate information about what is going on in our country and in the world?
Mandatory military service. Like Switzerland. Weaponry in every house sufficient to get to the depot.
How about the horseshiy excreted by Todd Wagner?
What a brainless shmuck Todd “Yahoo Basher” Wagner is.
He says the company is irrelevant and wants to replace Melissa
and the entire board. Never mind that YHOO is UP 122%
since Melissa took over.
And Moron Wagner sings the praises of Twitter – DOWN 69%
In the last year. This guy is effin’ NUTS.
He’s real pretty.
BTW, my friend Victor in Seattle emailed me today his proposed solution for combating terrorism. I put it at the end of the J P Morgan thread and won’t repeat it here, so as not to add more stuff here. But if you want to read it and/or give your opinion of it, click back. I’ll be glad to email your feedback back to him. He is very serious at looking for a solution– as we all should be. It’s not as if the government has this problem solved for us and we can forget about it.
When is Reuters going to post an article about how South Side Chicago’s gun violence went up when Obama was the community organizer there?
Interesting. So you really believe that if in fact the gun violence there did go up there during that time, that it was Obama’s fault personally– that all other possible causes were insignificant contributors?
I think the Right Wing press is doing the job of painting Obama as the cause of all bad things that have ever happened in the U.S. or the world. If you don’t read/watch/listen to the Right Wing press already, then there are people here who obviously do, so you can ask them where to find your preferred types of news.
If that is a fact, I would like to see that reported, although I personally do not see it as likely to be Obama’s personal fault, if it is so. I would like to see an investigative journalism piece detailing all the possible contributing factors to such statistics.
paid taxes this year……..thanks obama
And you got something in return for those taxes. Perhaps not what you wanted, but something.
And it’s not Obama you should thank but the GOP dominated Congress. Congress makes the laws. There has been no executive order that changed your tax rate.
And it’s not even really Congress you should thank for paying taxes and for whatever you get or don’t get in return. It’s the citizens of this country who voted Congress into office.
Government R us. As the comic strip character Pogo used to say “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
In a country where 63.6% of eligible voters stayed home and did not vote in the last Congressional election in 2014, you can also thank the voters who did not vote. And the people who do not get out on the streets and demonstrate and demand that their public servants BE public servants and enact legislation that is beneficial for the nation.
ya I had to pay a fee to have someone do my taxes too. pay on the way in, pay on the way out, pay if you die before anyone can touch it. just pay ok?
……………………..i also got to watch the passerby throughout the year take advantage of my tax dollars- getting free food at the grocery store for the same stuff i pay for……….. Louisiana purchase card, ya dig?
long story short- nah, my taxes aren’t giving me back anything. especially the 45 minute average response time for our police department and the thousands of bums in our tiny little downtown.
yeah, im getting my tax dollars’ worth…….. and im also bill cosby
and tbh i didn’t read your comment before i replied -_-
hftongue, now that I think about it, I suspect that there is something you that Obama is doing NOW that is probably your issue. What is it? If you think it’s the wrong approach, what would you do differently if you were president? What kinds of facts and investigative research would you like to see communicated in a news article on the subject?
and DONT FORGET OUR LACK OF QUALITY PUBLIC ROADS.
this is in a wealthy area of town, potholes covered with oyster shells as citizens are fed up with our lack of progress:
http://myinforms.com/en/a/25983344-someone-filled-maple-street-potholes-with-oyster-shells/
THIS is in government housing that our taxpayers subsidize:
http://wwno.org/post/public-housing-project-reborn-new-orleans
PERFECTLY PAVED STREETS.
ok i know that has nothing to do with Obama but whatever, i can still be irritated.
I grew up in a suburb of New Orleans and now live on the West Coast. I miss it terribly, except for the hot humid weather. I also remember how corrupt the city and state government are, and how most people just passively accept that, rather than trying to do anything about it.
I think New Orleans is the most wonderful place on earth, regardless. If you can stand the weather, it’s great.
I am upset that Louisiana now faces a $3 billion budget shortfall, thanks to recent Republican governor Bobby Jindal gutting the state’s tax base in a futile attempt to impress a Koch Brother or two. Which certainly has nothing to do with Obama either.
Reuters, Yahoo, iBankCoin, and just about every other info source in the US would serve us well by writing far fewer Trump stories.
I like that idea. What kind of news would you most like them to write about?
I’d like to hear different ideas on how the people, the Congress, and the president could solve the most pressing problems we face– and the facts relevant to such problems and solutions.
Actually, I’d like to see articles laying out the problems, and then letting the whole comment board have at it, giving suggestions for possible solutions.
He really is the master of BS: http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/