Mar 27, 2008

Oracle came out with cautious outlook. Generally Chambers has been optimistic specifically around global growth.

ConAgra Foods, Inc., (NYSE:CAG), announced today that it has reached an agreement to sell its commodity trading and merchandising operations conducted by ConAgra Trade Group to the Ospraie Special Opportunities fund and other investors for approximately $2.1 billion, subject to certain adjustments. The Ospraie Special Opportunities fund is an affiliate of Ospraie Management, a leading investment management firm focused exclusively on commodities and basic industries with approximately $9 billion under management. ConAgra Trade Group will be renamed Gavilon LLC upon completion of the sale.

AGAIN we see the big man going down. The largest hedge fund run by John Meriwether has plunged 28 percent this year, forcing the co-founder of the defunct Long-Term Capital Management to scramble again to stem losses and keep investors from fleeing, the Wall Street Journal said on Thursday. Losses for the Relative Value Opportunity leveraged bond fund accelerated this month, after the fund had dropped 9.19 percent from Jan 1 to Feb 28. The broader JWM Global Macro fund, also run by Meriwether's Greenwich, Connecticut firm JWM Partners LLC, was down 6 per cent through February, the newspaper said.

To quickly disappear - Hedge funds are collapsing at a rapid clip in 2008, with managers who oversaw some USD3.9 billion in assets shutting down in the first quarter. Since most of 2007's failures came in the summer, with few at the start of the year, the industry may be on track to beat last year's closures of 49 funds that managed about USD18.6 billion in assets.

WOW - how does a guitar fund raise money? / London-based Anchorage Capital has composed The Guitar Fund, a USD100 million-plus number that will invest in vintage guitars, a commodity that has played to the tune of an average 31.6% annually for the past 17 years.