<
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-04-02/a-hedge-fund-that-s-also-a-newspaper>
"We talked in November about Hunterbrook, a hedge fund that is also a
newspaper. These are mostly tough economic times for the news industry, and
Hunterbrook hit upon a differentiated media business model:
1. They would start a newsroom (Hunterbrook Media) to publish general news and
investigative journalism.
2. There’s no paywall and no advertising.
3. But before each investigative piece is published, the newsroom would send it
to Hunterbrook’s affiliated hedge fund (Hunterbrook Capital), which could trade
on the news.
4. The hedge fund’s trading profits can — they hope! — pay the journalists’
salaries.
One way to think of this business model is that Hunterbrook is essentially an
activist short-selling hedge fund, like Hindenburg Research: It investigates
companies, finds problems, shorts the companies, and then noisily publishes its
investigation to draw attention to the problems. But whereas Hindenburg is
straightforwardly a short-selling firm, Hunterbrook’s news site is at least
theoretically independent of its hedge fund, and if it publishes enough good
general news then perhaps it can become more widely read and trusted — and have
more stock-price impact — than a pure hedge fund.
Another way to think of this business model is that it is a salary arbitrage.
It is expensive to hire hedge fund analysts to investigate companies all over
the world. It is cheaper to hire journalists! You might find more tradable
signals with 20 journalists than you can with one hedge-fund analyst."
Via
Garbage Day: Welcome to the video bloat era
https://www.garbageday.email/p/welcome-video-bloat-era
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
