The Morning Brief: SAC’s Cohen Fires Back; Loeb Takes Potshot at Ackman

Steven Cohenshot backat the Securities and Exchange Commission, which filed charges against him last week for “failing to supervise” key employees. The embattled founder of SAC Capital Advisors fired off a 46-page paper, prepared by his lawyers, rebutting the SEC’s allegations point by point. Among his claims: He never read specific incriminating emails in question, and he sold specific stocks in question simply because there was little further upside.

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Third Point’s Daniel Loebtook a gratuitous shotat a rival hedge fund manager, Pershing Square’s William Ackman, on Tuesday. Bloomberg TV anchor Stephanie Ruhle pointed out that the feisty hedge fund manager’s profile on Bloomberg included message that stated: “New HLF product: The Herbalife Enema, administered by Uncle Carl.” Loeb was referring to the stock of Herbalife, which Carl Icahn and Loeb bought after Ackman’s high profile public presentation on why he was shorting the nutrition supplements company’s shares.

Since bottoming out shortly after Ackman’s announcement, the stock is up 127 percent, including s 31 percent gain in July alone. At last week’s Delivering Alpha conference, held in New York last week by CNBC and InstitutionalInvestor, Icahn joked that he no longer hates Ackmsan because he made a quarter of a billion dollars on Herbalife’s stock, which he has yet to sell (the two managers famously tangled on CNBC over the stock earlier this year). Loeb, who also went long Herbalife, has sold a lot of his shares.

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Hedge fund favorite Apple reported earnings revenues that exceeded Wall Street estimates. As a result, the stock climbed between 2 and 4 percent in after-hours trading. Analysts were also impressed that iPhone sales were better than expected. The stock fell 1.72 percent in the regular session.

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Deutsche Bank Tuesday raised its price target on hedge fund favorite Priceline.com to $980 from $900, saying it wants to own the shares before the company reports results for the second quarter. It is also looking for price-to-earnings multiple expansion.

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Gottex Fund Management Holdings., a fund-of-hedge-funds firm, said that in the first half of the year, Asian strategies were up 7.9 percent, alternative credit strategies were up 4.2 percent and portable alpha U.S. equity strategies were up 16.2 percent. Even so, total fee-earning assets for the group fell 6.5 percent to $5.9 billion compared to March 31, citing net outflows and the impact from foreign exchange.