Saturday, April 23, 2016

WHY IS HILLARY A HEDGE FUND FAVORITE?

Besides the fact that Hillary is a multi milionaire in her own right and that her son-in-law founded a hedge fund of his own why is so much of this money flowing into her campaign coffers?

Simple; Big money wants to hedge on both sides as longs as it's on someone who'll play ball with them. Their picks foretell what's to come; Cruz or Clinton (who both have family members working on Wallstreet).

Are super PACs becoming captive to hedge funders? Six give nearly $10 million to presidential groups in March alone | OpenSecrets Blog

Hedge fund managers know something about when to hold and when to fold. Last month, they did more of the former when it came to political giving, holding steady with their pattern of making uber-contributions to presidential super PACs — even after the favored candidate of some of them dropped out of the race.

Wall Street dominates political giving. But it’s these donors, a much smaller subset of the securities sector, who play with the biggest money.

The month of March saw more big contributions to presidential super PACs fromJames Simons, Robert Mercer, Donald Sussman, Paul Singer , George Soros and Cliff Asness in particular. The six men — founders of investment companies that manage hedge funds, or high-risk private funds that often require seven-figure buy-ins from their investors — anted up a total of $9.5 million to presidentially focused super PACs for the month, bringing their total gifts to these groups to $33.5 million for the cycle.

Before the latest super PAC filings, which were due at the Federal Election Commission by midnight last night, the larger securities and investment industry — including not just hedge funds but commercial banks, brokerage firms and other industries — had given $221 million to congressional and presidential campaigns and super PACs in the 2016 cycle.

By itself, the hedge fund industry had given almost $75 million.

Throughout the current presidential campaign season, hedge fund managers have steadily given to Priorities USA Action, the super PAC backing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The March contributions are the latest evidence that super PACs are allowing a powerful industry to dominate political giving. To put the multimillion-dollar gifts in perspective, however, consider not just the naked wealth of the donors (Soros is worth an estimated $25 billion, for example; Singer, $2.2 billiion) but also the multibillions in assets under management reported by the investment firms: Renaissance Technologies, the firm founded by Simons and now led by Mercer, has almost $72 billion in assets under management, according to Securities and Exchange Commission records; Singer’s firm Elliott Management has $46 billion under management. For Paloma Partners, Sussman’s firm, the figure is $7.5 billion.

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