Hedge funds

Event-driven hedge funds speculating on corporate deals and restructurings are falling out of fashion, with investors withdrawing $31 billion from managers this year.

The ill-timed Alibaba trades add to the hedge fund industry’s woes as some of its biggest and best-known firms lose assets amid souring investor sentiment.

Speculation is mounting that Fed officials, in a statement scheduled for release on Sept. 21, will signal that higher U.S. interest rates are on the way.

"A sooner-than-expected hike could result in these stocks trading up sharply, but the options market is largely discounting / overlooking this possibility," strategists wrote in a client note.

BlackRock is joining firms including Paulson, Manikay Partners and Arrowgrass Capital Partners that have recently raised dedicated merger funds.

Banks and investment funds are hiring quants — people with training in physics or higher mathematics — as market intervention by central banks make it difficult to post robust profits.

The positioning leaves the biggest speculators at odds with an increasingly skeptical analyst contingent on Wall Street.

Bossen joined as director of ETF business development at the institutional intermediary division and will focus on the IndexIQ unit that MainStay acquired last year.

Since December, almost $90 billion has been withdrawn from mutual and ETFs, exceeding outflows from all but one year at this point of time in data going back to 1984.

Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman maintained his bet against Herbalife even after the company reached a $200 million settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.