Security guards and staff stand at the entrance of an Apple store during the release of iPhone 5 in Beijing's Wangfujing shopping district, December 14, 2012.

BOSTON | Thu Feb 14, 2013 7:23pm EST

BOSTON (Reuters) - Some of the biggest hedge funds that helped make Apple Inc a stock market darling lost faith and dumped their stakes in the fourth quarter, fueling the massive drop in the iPhone maker's share price.

Noted stock pickers including Leon Cooperman, Eric Mindich and Thomas Steyer unloaded billions of dollars of Apple shares between September 30 and December 31, according to disclosure documents filed on Thursday.

Shares of Apple rose to an all-time high of $705.07 on September 21 but ended 2012 down more than 24 percent from that peak as investors worried about increasing competition and declining profit margins.

The shares also may have dropped because their price rose too much, too fast.

"The stock just went up so much in early 2012 and then was coming back to earth," said Justin Walters, co-founder of Wall Street research firm Bespoke Investment Group. "Three months from now, we'll be seeing a lot of the people who sold starting to pick it up again."

The fourth-quarter sellers avoided even deeper losses. Apple's shares have lost 12 percent so far this year. The shares lost 42 cents, or 0.1 percent, to close at $466.59 on the Nasdaq on Thursday.

Cooperman's Omega Advisors fund dumped its entire stake of more than 266,000 shares during the fourth quarter, according to its required quarterly disclosure form filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Mindich, named the youngest partner ever at Goldman Sachs before starting his Eton Park Capital Management fund in 2004, got out of Apple entirely in the fourth quarter after making big sales in the third quarter as well. Eton owned 600,000 shares at the beginning of 2012.

Farallon Capital, the hedge fund founded by Steyer, sold 137,000 shares. Steyer, who once worked on the Goldman Sachs risk arbitrage desk under Robert Rubin, stepped down at the end of the year from the firm, which he founded in 1986. Rubin served as U.S. Treasury secretary from 1995 to 1999.

Jana Partners, an activist fund run by Barry Rosenstein, also unloaded its entire Apple stake of more than 143,000 shares. Other notable sellers included Third Point LLC, which had owned 710,000 shares, Viking Global Investors, which dumped 1.1 million shares and Lone Pine Capital, which sold over 800,000 shares.

A much smaller line up of funds bought shares amid the stock's crash. David Tepper's Appaloosa Management nearly doubled its stake during the quarter to about 913,000 shares. George Soros more than doubled his stake to about 184,000 shares. And David Einhorn, who last week sued Apple in a bid for higher dividends, added 20 percent to his holdings to end the quarter with 1.3 million shares.

PROFITABLE TRADES

Despite the plunge in Apple's stock price, most of the managers likely exited their positions with substantial profits because they bought years earlier.

Rosenstein and Cooperman, for example, both started gathering their stakes in the middle of 2010, when Apple shares traded below $300.

At the time, the company's iPhone 4 was beset by alleged faulty reception, a problem that became known as "antennagate." Apple's then-chief executive, the late Steve Jobs, famously dismissed the issue, saying "we don't think we have a problem." But Apple offered customers a free bumper case that was supposed to minimize any issues.

Customers did not seem to care, snapping up millions of iPhones and sending Apple's share price up almost 50 percent over the next year.

Apple came under further scrutiny last week from Greenlight's Einhorn. Einhorn filed a lawsuit to block changes in Apple's policy for issuing preferred stock. Instead, Apple should issue a new class of preferred stock to share more of its $137 billion cash hoard with shareholders, Einhorn said.

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook dismissed the moves as a "silly sideshow" on Tuesday.

SOME TRIMMED

Not all well-known hedge fund fans of Apple cut ties in the fourth quarter. Some only trimmed their holdings.

Philippe Laffont, who worked under famed hedge fund manager Julian Robertson before striking out on his own at Coatue Management, sold about 18 percent of his Apple shares. Coatue ended the year with a still sizable 643,000 shares.

Chase Coleman, another manager who worked for Robertson, reduced the Apple stake at his Tiger Global Management fund by 19 percent to just over 1 million shares.

Robertson's own Tiger Management LLC fund trimmed its Apple stake by 28 percent to about 42,000 shares.

Large hedge funds are required to disclose their U.S. stock holdings within 45 days after the end of each quarter.

But the filings may not give a complete picture of each fund's moves, since only U.S.-listed shares and options must be revealed. Bonds, foreign shares and derivatives are not included, and short positions, or bets that a stock will fall in price, are not listed.

(Reporting by Aaron Pressman; Additional reporting by Katya Wachtel, Svea Herbst, Sam Forgione and Jennifer Ablan in New York; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and David Gregorio)

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NEW YORK | Sun Oct 14, 2012 4:02pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hedge funds and other big speculators piled into the rallying gold and natural gas markets for a second week running, taking the net long money in U.S. commodities up by nearly $1 billion, trade data showed on Friday.

The so-called "money managers" in commodities boosted their net longs in gold to the highest level in nearly 16 months, while taking bullish bets in gas to 8-week peaks, according to the data issued by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.(CFTC)

Reuters' calculations of the CFTC's Commitment of Traders data showed the value of the net long position held by money managers in some 22 U.S. commodity markets tracked by the CFTC rose by around $900 million in the week to October 9, touching nearly $114 billion.

The figures are calculated by Reuters based on the change in net positions from the week before, multiplied by the contract's value at the end of the period. Because most investors trade commodities on margin, the change in the value of positions is not directly equivalent to total investment.

Managed money's net length in gold futures and options traded on New York's COMEX rose by 2,547 lots to 198,194 lots in the week ended October 9 -- the largest such holding since August 2011.

Gold posted four straight months of gains prior to October. Last week, it hit 11-month highs just below $1,800 an ounce.

While the precious metal saw some profit-taking this week -- closing on Friday with the sharpest weekly decline since June -- some analysts expect a rebound due to euro zone debt worries and economic uncertainties.

Prospects of a U.S. "fiscal cliff" of automatic spending cuts and tax increases scheduled for January could also shock the U.S. economy and lead to more money printing from the Federal Reserve, analysts said.

In natural gas, money managers added 13,119 contracts in NYMEX natural gas futures and options, NYMEX Henry Hub Swaps, NYMEX Henry Hub Penultimate Swaps, and ICE Henry Hub Swaps, for a net long position of 151,942. It was the largest net long position in eight weeks for speculators in gas.

The front-month contract for NYMEX natural gas hit a 2012 peak of $3.638 per million British thermal units (mmmBtu) in Friday's session. Gas prices have gained nearly 30 percent since the end of August, helped by light stockpile builds amid cooler weather forecasts in the U.S. Northeast.

(Editing by Sofina Mirza-Reid)

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NEW YORK | Fri Oct 12, 2012 5:47pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hedge funds and other big speculators piled into the rallying gold and natural gas markets for a second week running, taking the net long money in U.S. commodities up by nearly $1 billion, trade data showed on Friday.

The so-called "money managers" in commodities boosted their net longs in gold to the highest level in nearly 16 months, while taking bullish bets in gas to 8-week peaks, according to the data issued by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.(CFTC)

Reuters' calculations of the CFTC's Commitment of Traders data showed the value of the net long position held by money managers in some 22 U.S. commodity markets tracked by the CFTC rose by around $900 million in the week to October 9, touching nearly $114 billion.

The figures are calculated by Reuters based on the change in net positions from the week before, multiplied by the contract's value at the end of the period. Because most investors trade commodities on margin, the change in the value of positions is not directly equivalent to total investment.

Managed money's net length in gold futures and options traded on New York's COMEX rose by 2,547 lots to 198,194 lots in the week ended October 9 -- the largest such holding since August 2011.

Gold posted four straight months of gains prior to October. Last week, it hit 11-month highs just below $1,800 an ounce.

While the precious metal saw some profit-taking this week -- closing on Friday with the sharpest weekly decline since June -- some analysts expect a rebound due to euro zone debt worries and economic uncertainties.

Prospects of a U.S. "fiscal cliff" of automatic spending cuts and tax increases scheduled for January could also shock the U.S. economy and lead to more money printing from the Federal Reserve, analysts said.

In natural gas, money managers added 13,119 contracts in NYMEX natural gas futures and options, NYMEX Henry Hub Swaps, NYMEX Henry Hub Penultimate Swaps, and ICE Henry Hub Swaps, for a net long position of 151,942. It was the largest net long position in eight weeks for speculators in gas.

The front-month contract for NYMEX natural gas hit a 2012 peak of $3.638 per million British thermal units (mmmBtu) in Friday's session. Gas prices have gained nearly 30 percent since the end of August, helped by light stockpile builds amid cooler weather forecasts in the U.S. Northeast.

(Editing by Sofina Mirza-Reid)

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NEW YORK | Mon Oct 8, 2012 3:41pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. hedge funds and other clients of Wall Street investment firms raised their level of borrowed money in August, a sign they may be more confident in the markets, data published Monday showed.

Leverage rose to $286.6 billion last month, according to New York Stock Exchange margin debt data, up 5.4 percent since August last year. It is the first time in nine months that margin debt has increased on a year-over-year basis, analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch showed in their Hedge Fund Monitor report.

Leverage levels "can be used as a sentiment indicator" so the increase could mean investors have regained some confidence in the market, the report said.

While the level of leverage recorded in August is a 3.2 percent rise on July levels, it still lags the amount of borrowed cash that investors were using to make bets in the stock market before Lehman Brothers collapsed, according to NYSE data.

Hedge funds have gained about 5 percent this year through September, according to hedge fund tracking firms, but still trail the broader stock market. The S&P 500 index rose more than 16 percent through September.

August's rise in leverage could be an indication that hedge funds and large investors, reassured by rallying stock markets, are willing to use more borrowed money try and amplify their returns, though another month of data would be needed to confirm this, Bank of America analyst Mary Ann Bartels said in an email.

Before the financial crisis, hedge funds, particularly those focused on bets in credit markets, used leverage in different forms boost returns, such as increasing exposure to inherently levered products like derivatives, or by using margin or borrowed money from Wall Street.

In 2007, NYSE margin debt rose above $317 billion and stayed there for the remainder of the year, hitting a peak of more than $381 billion that July.

Investors reduced their leverage in 2009 and 2010 to levels as low as $173 billion and then began to borrow more money again through July of 2011. Spooked by whipsawing markets last summer, which devastated the portfolios of some of the country's savviest investors, money managers took off leverage again in the second half of the year.

Through August, NYSE margin debt is down about 4 percent from its 2012 peak of $298.5 billion, recorded in April. Beginning in May risk-averse investors reduced leverage, pulling back from global financial markets riled by fears that Greece would exit the deeply troubled euro zone.

Margin debt remains down roughly 10.6 percent from its post-2008 peak of $320.7 billion, which it reached in April last year.

NYSE member organizations are required to report monthly the total amount of money borrowed by customers to purchase securities.

While hedge funds have yet to ratchet up to pre-crisis levels, or even to the highs of 2011, Bank of America analysts said the fact that investors increased leverage last month is a positive sign.

Margin debt is one way to measure how much risk hedge funds and other large investors are taking by using borrowed cash, but it fails to address or measure the exposure those firms have to 'embedded' or 'hidden' leverage, which they can obtain by investing in structured products like collateralized loan obligations or asset-backed-securities, which are more highly levered in themselves. Some hedge funds have been eyeing those riskier, more exotic assets in their hunt for yield.

Data published Friday by BarclayHedge and TrimTabs showed that hedge fund managers "are strongly inclined to maintain current levels of leverage," and "plans to lever up fell slightly in September while plans to reduce leverage climbed by a small margin."

(Reporting By Katya Wachtel)

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NEW YORK | Fri Sep 28, 2012 7:09pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hedge funds and other big speculators have pulled more than $5 billion from U.S. commodity markets, cutting their net long position for the first time in six weeks after sending oil, metals and crop prices to multimonth highs, trade data showed Friday.

The profit-taking in the week to September 25 was the biggest in four months by the so-called "money managers" in commodities, according to data issued by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and calculated by Reuters.

It was the first major snap in managed money net longs that had built up since early July in anticipation of stimulus measures from the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank.

In that period, hedge funds and other speculators pumped about $30 billion into U.S. commodities, by Reuters' estimates, creating new bullish milestones in crude oil, gold, copper and soybean prices.

Reuters' calculations of the CFTC's Commitment of Traders data showed the value of the net long position held by money managers in some 22 U.S. commodity markets fell to $112.3 billion in the week to September 25, from $117.8 billion in the week ended September 18.

The figures are calculated by Reuters based on the change in net positions from a week ago, multiplied by the contract's value at the end of the period. Because most investors trade commodities on margin, the change in the value of positions is not directly equivalent to total investment.

In contract terms, the decline during the week to September 25 was 87,955 contracts, or nearly 6 percent lower from the previous week.

OIL LEADS LOSSES, GOLD SHINES

Oil accounted for much of the loss. Reuters' calculations showed a net outflow of $3.4 billion, or 36,885 contracts, in crude oil futures held by money managers on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Speculators were also bearish on natural gas, soybeans, raw sugar, cotton and arabica coffee -- trimming net longs or adding to net shorts in these markets.

The profit-taking did not mean that money managers were done on commodities, said some analysts, who placed high hopes on an even bigger rally down the road in markets such as gold due to inflationary pressure.

Managed money's net long in U.S. gold hit near seven-month highs on bets that major central banks would keep pumping money to stimulate growth.

"Gold is being utilized as a protest by investors against governments which are failing miserably to solve their deficit and debt problems," said Jeffrey Sica, chief investment officer of SICA Wealth Management, which has over $1 billion in assets.

Gold closed lower on Friday, but the precious metal posted its biggest quarterly gain in more than two years.

The 19-commodity Thomson Reuters-Jefferies CRB index, a bellwether for the asset class, also had its best quarter since the first quarter of 2011.

Monthly data issued separately by the CFTC on Friday showed the net length across U.S. commodity markets rose by $8.8 billion in August to $209 billion.

The CFTC figures account for only a portion of the investor capital invested in commodity markets worldwide. Much of the rest are invested in over-the-counter contracts, physical exchange funds or credit notes, or via banks, which are classified differently by the CFTC.

(Editing by Jim Marshall)

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NEW YORK | Fri Sep 28, 2012 7:09pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hedge funds and other big speculators have pulled more than $5 billion from U.S. commodity markets, cutting their net long position for the first time in six weeks after sending oil, metals and crop prices to multimonth highs, trade data showed Friday.

The profit-taking in the week to September 25 was the biggest in four months by the so-called "money managers" in commodities, according to data issued by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and calculated by Reuters.

It was the first major snap in managed money net longs that had built up since early July in anticipation of stimulus measures from the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank.

In that period, hedge funds and other speculators pumped about $30 billion into U.S. commodities, by Reuters' estimates, creating new bullish milestones in crude oil, gold, copper and soybean prices.

Reuters' calculations of the CFTC's Commitment of Traders data showed the value of the net long position held by money managers in some 22 U.S. commodity markets fell to $112.3 billion in the week to September 25, from $117.8 billion in the week ended September 18.

The figures are calculated by Reuters based on the change in net positions from a week ago, multiplied by the contract's value at the end of the period. Because most investors trade commodities on margin, the change in the value of positions is not directly equivalent to total investment.

In contract terms, the decline during the week to September 25 was 87,955 contracts, or nearly 6 percent lower from the previous week.

OIL LEADS LOSSES, GOLD SHINES

Oil accounted for much of the loss. Reuters' calculations showed a net outflow of $3.4 billion, or 36,885 contracts, in crude oil futures held by money managers on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Speculators were also bearish on natural gas, soybeans, raw sugar, cotton and arabica coffee -- trimming net longs or adding to net shorts in these markets.

The profit-taking did not mean that money managers were done on commodities, said some analysts, who placed high hopes on an even bigger rally down the road in markets such as gold due to inflationary pressure.

Managed money's net long in U.S. gold hit near seven-month highs on bets that major central banks would keep pumping money to stimulate growth.

"Gold is being utilized as a protest by investors against governments which are failing miserably to solve their deficit and debt problems," said Jeffrey Sica, chief investment officer of SICA Wealth Management, which has over $1 billion in assets.

Gold closed lower on Friday, but the precious metal posted its biggest quarterly gain in more than two years.

The 19-commodity Thomson Reuters-Jefferies CRB index, a bellwether for the asset class, also had its best quarter since the first quarter of 2011.

Monthly data issued separately by the CFTC on Friday showed the net length across U.S. commodity markets rose by $8.8 billion in August to $209 billion.

The CFTC figures account for only a portion of the investor capital invested in commodity markets worldwide. Much of the rest are invested in over-the-counter contracts, physical exchange funds or credit notes, or via banks, which are classified differently by the CFTC.

(Editing by Jim Marshall)

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