Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Ospraie fund to close


Whoops. Lehman owned 20% of this.

Now we know where some of the selling came from today!

They lost almost $2 billion in their commodity fund, and were down big in their major stock fund. In July they managed over $9 billion in all their funds. Now they are closing their larget fund, which was down 27% in August due to bad bets on oil and naural gas.
Ospraie managers have been selling assets as they prepare to return 40% of the fund's remaining value to investors by the end of September. Another 40% is expected to be returned by year-end, with the remaining taking longer because the assets are hard-to-sell, illiquid investments, Mr. Anderson's letter says.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122039727520692751.html?mod=hps_us_whats_news

Here's their latest 13-F for one of their stock funds.
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326533/000095015908001228/ospraie13fhr.txt

Ospraie spent $2.2 billion for ConAgra's commodity trading unit in March. Apparently Ospraie couldn't game commodity positions! Why else would they acquire a commodity supply chain business?
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aHgrIyX0y04k

But the market's justice is swift. Gouging the public and farmers by attempting to front run commodity prices works until it doesn't!

And now the speculators are learning that same lesson in oil.

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch!

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