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Strategies & Market Trends : MDA - Market Direction Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Michael Watkins who wrote (48485)	4/28/2000 3:27:00 AM
From: el paradisio	Respond to of 99985

Michael, thanks, nice beginning for tomorrow.... Coming back to my view on the market,bullish,but not blind. I am on the long side as well...50% WCOM and 50% in cash. In that market,I am trying to find a disease... and diagnose if it is curable and not contagious....chart patterns are only the symptoms... Good night, el paradisio

To: Michael Watkins who wrote (48485)	4/28/2000 5:19:00 AM
From: Haim R. Branisteanu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 99985

Druckenmiller, Roditi to Leave Soros Fund Management (Update1) By Katherine Burton New York, April 28 (Bloomberg) -- Stanley Druckenmiller and Nicholas Roditi, the top managers for George Soros's $14.2 billion investment firm, are leaving the world's biggest hedge fund group after its assets dropped about $5 billion this month, people familiar with the situation said. The departures of Druckenmiller, chief investment strategist of Soros Fund Management LLC, and Roditi, who racked up average annual gains of 39 percent since 1992, could prompt investor defections from the 31-year-old firm, since they managed two- thirds of its assets. ``These two men are the foundation of the brand-name status of Soros Fund Management among hedge fund investors for the last decade,'' said Colin Negrych, principal at Barclay Investments Inc. ``They are legends.'' The departures come a month after Julian Robertson said he would close Tiger Management LLC, until last year the world's second-largest hedge fund group. The losses at Soros came as the Nasdaq Composite Index fell as much as 37 percent between March 10 and April 17. The hedge fund reversals highlight the difficulty of making big bets with borrowed money at a time when U.S. financial markets are at their most volatile ever. The Nasdaq rose or fell more than 6 percent in one day six times in the past month. Soros's firm may tell shareholders by May 1 if it will close Druckenmiller's $8.2 billion Quantum Fund and Roditi's $1.2 billion Quota Fund or name new managers, the people said. A spokesman for 69-year-old Soros, a Hungarian-born financier, declined to comment. `New Economy' Roditi, 54, has stepped away from managing Soros's money before. He took a medical leave in October 1998, but came back a few months later. A native of what is now Zimbabwe, Roditi studied law in South Africa and business at University of London. He founded S. Roditi & Co. in London in 1992, the same year he started managing money for Soros. Druckenmiller, 46, was the architect of Soros's more than $1 billion winning bet against the Bank of England's defense of sterling in 1992. He has lost 22 percent from the firm's flagship Quantum Fund this year while Roditi's fund has plunged 33 percent. Almost all of their losses came since March. ``Our long stock portfolio had been geared toward the new economy, and we got taken apart in the last few weeks,'' Druckenmiller said in an interview on March 30, the day Robertson announced the closure of his funds. ``My macro trading hasn't been pretty the last month or two.'' Druckenmiller piled into technology shares such as Qualcomm Inc. late last year, driving performance up 35 percent in 1999, exceeding the 21 percent advance of the Standard & Poor's 500 Index. The previous three years, Quantum's returns were lower than the S&P 500, and Druckenmiller's own record of 30 percent average annual returns between 1989 and 1999. Roditi's fund was hurt recently because of hefty investments in technology stocks and also because ``he thought the euro was looking cheap,'' said Iain Jenkins, editor of EuroHedge, a London- based newsletter that tracks the hedge fund business. The euro has fallen 9.7 percent against the U.S. dollar this year. Firm's Future? A month ago, 67-year-old Robertson said he would close Tiger because his style of picking stocks was no longer working. He had averaged annual returns of 25 percent since 1980 and as recently as mid-1998 was almost even with Soros as the largest hedge fund group. The fate of Soros's firm, whose assets under management have shrunk from about $22 billion in June 1998, isn't clear. It's a pressing issue because Druckenmiller has been running investments at the firm since 1989, when Soros stepped aside to concentrate on philanthropy. The strains on Druckenmiller have mounted over the past four years, when his performance often lagged. The New York-based firm responded last August by bringing in Duncan Hennes, a veteran of Bankers Trust Corp., as chief executive officer to manage the group, allowing Druckenmiller to focus on investing. While Soros's flagship funds tumbled, the firm was increasing its focus on investments in Asia and European venture capital. The firm is raising as much as $1 billion to invest in Asian real estate and may move Richard Georgi, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who now works for Soros Real Estate Partners in London, to Tokyo to run the business. In Europe, Soros emerged as one of the main investors in Stockholm-based Internet investor Speed Ventures, which recently raised $70 million from Chase Capital Partners, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and others.