Lol, no. The FT went big for remain early on and has stayed that way. They think Brexit will bankrupt me.
September 12, 2019 12:13 pm by
Jamie Powell ,
John Burn-Murdoch and
Thomas Hale
Yesterday the
Byline Times outlined some £4.6bn of aggregate short equity positions from hedge funds that, the site claimed, “directly or indirectly bankrolled Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign”, and thus a no deal Brexit.
The inference is that hedge funds have used their financial might to influence the outcome of Brexit via political donations and are now standing to benefit through short positions in UK companies.
The problem is, it doesn’t make any sense. Here are a few of the problems with the article:
- Hedge funds contain multitudes. Take Marshall Wace, which boasts £40bn of assets under management. It’s run by pro-Brexit Paul Marshall (cited in the article), and pro-Remain Ian Wace (not cited in the article).
- UK stocks often have little exposure to the UK economy. Take Cineworld, which according to the data Byline Times cited, has seen the biggest increase in short interest in the past month. But 75 per cent of its revenue was from the US in the first half of 2019, according to the company’s latest interim results.
- Equity outcomes are explicitly uncertain — what is a short position on a “no deal Brexit”? A short position on any company? A short position could also be a play on remain. For instance, a company might benefit from a stronger dollar, or less EU regulation.
- Hedge fund strategies are not simply running grand macro strategies on the fate of a nation. To mention Marshall Wace again, it runs a quantitative strategy called TOPS, which aggregates and makes decisions based on external investment research.
- The most-shorted companies have short theses which have nothing to do with Brexit, like Thomas Cook (over-leveraged) or Kier Group (over-leveraged).
- A fund might be short because of arbitrage opportunities, or to hedge a long position (which might contradict the notion it is betting on no deal).
- The biggest single donor to either campaign was Lord Sainsbury, who donated £4.2m to the Remain campaign (source: Transparency International). Of the £16.4m contributed by the top ten donors to either campaign, 58 per cent went to Leave and 42 per cent to Remain.
- As Louis Goddard from Global Witness pointed out on Twitter, there also fundamental problems with how the data has been presented.
More to the point, it’s not clear what exactly the authors are alleging. Is the accusation that all donations are motivated by profits, rather than ideology? Or could it now be the case that, with a no deal looking probable, they might be positioning their portfolios accordingly? That’s assuming, of course, they have a mandate from their investors to position their portfolios accordingly.