Hedge fund manager Greenlight Capital sold out of a number of positions over the second quarter of 2009. Overall, the firm made purchases of $417mm, while selling $1,148mm, for a net change of $730mm.

Since there seemed to be no broad trends regarding Greenlight Capital’s investments over the quarter, it is clear the firm screened equity investments on a company by company basis. The four new purchases made over the quarter include two insurers, a healthcare company, and a natural gas producer:

At the end of each trading week, Hillbent scans the equity market for potential anomalies which exhibit extremely oversold and overbought conditions. Past observations have revealed that such candidates may experience reversal corrections to the upside or downside once the market reconfirms that their fundamentals remain solidly intact or relatively poor. From a contrarian perspective, these lists may also serve as a precursor to changes in institutional sentiment and underlying fundamentals.

(The purpose of this report is not to provide specific recommendations, but instead serve as a time-saving reference tool and starting point for investment ideas as the upcoming trading week unfolds. Of course, the results generated are not always perfect and users are strongly encouraged to perform their own due diligence on these names. Note that overbought and oversold conditions are based upon proprietary algorithms and quantitative models instead of conventional technical analysis indicators. As a supplement to this report, please refer to our Market Condition Summary to determine if market direction trends support a bullish or bearish investment bias over short-term, intermediate, and long-term timeframes.)

Q4 2008 Earnings Call Transcript

March 02, 2009 at 5:00 pm ET

This is the 4th Quarter 2008 edition of our ongoing hedge fund portfolio tracking series. Before reading this update, make sure you check out the Hedge Fund 13F filings preface.

Next up is Greenlight Capital, a $6 billion fund ran by David Einhorn that specializes in spin-offs and value investing and has seen annual returns of over 20%. Einhorn's name has been popping up in the media a lot over the past year, as he talked about his well documented short position in Lehman Brothers. And, while that position paid off handsomely for him, it barely offset losses he experienced from other positions. He was caught in the massive Volkswagen (VLKAY.PK) short squeeze as he detailed in one of his latest investor letters. Einhorn has also recently detailed the saga between his fund and Allied Capital (ALD), a company he shorted, in his book Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: A Long Short Story. It gives you an inside perspective as to how Greenlight constructs and researches their investment theses and we highly recommend it. Greenlight approaches things by identifying mispricings in the markets and going from there.

After years of expansion and development, the restaurant industry is in danger of overbuilding, especially within the casual dining segment, which includes sit-down restaurants such as Applebee's (DIN), Chili's (EAT), Ruby Tuesday (RT) and [Darden's] Olive Garden... Bennigan’s and Steak & Ale chains went bankrupt in July.

Advertising is still up:

We were able to successfully strengthen our advertising and promotion plans to address the growing consumer need for increased value and affordability.

We continue to think that there’s plenty of opportunity in the US and Canada. We think that, our bet is if we’re in six or seven malls right now, and when I say we’re in malls, we’re usually in the parking lot with a breezeway entrance into the mall. In some instances, one example would be in Atlanta Cumberland Mall, they literally, the mall owner tore down I think it was the JC Penny and then we redid the parking lot and we have a gas station and a full Costco with no direct attachment other then a breezeway into the mall.

This is the Third Quarter 2008 edition of our ongoing hedge fund tracking series. Before reading this update, make sure you check out the preface to the series we're doing on Hedge Fund 13F's here. We've already covered Timothy Barakett's Atticus Capital,Whitney Tilson's T2 Partners, Peter Thiel's Clarium Capital, Bill Ackman's Pershing Square, Bret Barakett's Tremblant Capital, and John Paulson's Paulson & Co.

Next up, we have David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital. Greenlight is a $6 billion fund ran by David Einhorn and has seen annual returns of over 25%. Greenlight specializes in spin-offs and value investing. Einhorn's name has been popping up in the media a lot over the past year, as he talked about his welldocumented short position in Lehman Brothers (LEHMQ.PK). And, while that position paid off handsomely for him, it barely offset losses he experienced from other positions. Einhorn was -13% for October and is now -26% year-to-date, as noted in our October hedge fund performance numbers post. Einhorn has also recently detailed the saga between his fund and Allied Capital, a company he shorted, in his book Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: A Long Short Story. It gives you an inside perspective as to how Greenlight constructs and researches its investment theses and we highly recommend it.

Q3, 2008 Earnings Call

November 6, 2008 5:00 pm ET

Each day, Wall Street is flooded with stock research offering a multitude of conflicting investment opinions. As such, TickerMine is not in the business of providing more opinions. We believe that accurate raw data points can be used to gain insight in to the stock selection and valuation process.

31% of Red Robin Gourmet Burgers (RRGB) Say Business Is Stronger Than Last Year

Q2 2008 Earnings Call

August 6, 2008 5:00 pm ET

Each day, Wall Street is flooded with stock research offering a multitude of conflicting investment opinions. As such, TickerMine is not in the business of providing more opinions. We believe that accurate raw data points can be used to gain insight in to the stock selection and valuation process.

McCormick & Schmick's Seafood Restaurants' (MSSR) Prices Might Be too High, Survey Says

Are the top value hedge funds going to beat the market every quarter, or just outperform when the market is going up?

Maybe we should ask Will Ferrell, errr, I mean Robert Goulet:

Here is my initial list of replacement candidates for the third quarter 2008 portfolio reshaping:

AA ACMR ACS ACXM ADP AEM AEO AET AFFM AHL AIB AINV ALL AME AN APA ARP ATWO AVID AVZA AXS AYR BAGL BCPC BDK BGC BHI BJS BKS BLL BP BRO BRS BSET CAM CBI CBK CCK CCRT CDNS CFI CKH CMI COG COLM COMS CPB CRDN CROX CSCO CSL CTB DD DELL DFG DLM DRYS DUK DVN EGLE ENH EP ETP FAST FCX FDRY FITB FLEX FLXS FRPT FRZ FSR FTEK FTO GFF GHM GIL GMT GNK HAIN HAL HAR HAST HCC HCN HCP HELE HK HLYS HNT HNZ HOC HON HRS HRZ HTH INFS IPSU IR IRE ISCA ISYS IVN JCI JNX JOSB KCI KEY KMX KOF LMC LPX LRCX LSTR LZB MAN MAS MCRL MGIC MHK MHP MI MKSI MOT MPS MPWR MWA/A MXGL MYE NBR NBTY NFX NG NM NRG NSHA NTGR NVS NWLIA OC OCR ODP OIS OKE OMAB ONNN ORI OSK OXY PAYX PBI PBY PCZ PHX PKD PKI PPC PPG PRE PRU PTEN PVA PWR PXP PZZA RCII RDC RDK ROP RS RTN SAFM SCX SENEB SFY SGIC SGY SI SII SJM SKM SKX SLB SLGN SNDK SNG SNX SNY SPSS STZ SVR SVU SWN TECUA TEX THOR TLK TMS TPX TRMA TRN TRV TSC TSO TTC TXT UNF UNT URI USU VE VLGEA VLTR VZ WAG WDC WFT WGOV WNC WRB WTI WTIU WTM WY XEL Y ZNT ZZ

See intro to Leading Hedge Funds' Best Ideas.

50% of Einhorn's portfolio is in his top three holdings, and he was adding to all three - Target (TGT), Microsoft (MSFT), and Ameriprise (AMP), and selling some Helix (HLX). New positions include Patriot Coal (PCX), Echostar (SATS), and Energy Partners (EPL).

Each day, Wall Street is flooded with stock research offering a multitude of conflicting investment opinions. As such, TickerMine is not in the business of providing more opinions. We believe that accurate raw data points can be used to gain insight in to the stock selection and valuation process.

Lunch is Busiest at Burger King (BKC) with the Whopper as the Customers' Fave

A big increase in the top position Target (TGT), and new positions in Walgreens (WAG) and Health Management Corp. (HMA).

Q4 2007 Earnings Call

February 27, 2008 5:15 pm ET

See intro to Leading Hedge Funds' Best Ideas. Not much turnover in the top positions. New positions include Target (TGT), Children's Retail (PLCE), and US Bioenergy (USBE).

Top sectors in the portfolio include:
Services 23%
Technology 18%
Capital Goods 18%
Energy 18%

He writes:

Coming out of bankruptcy reorganization, management the past 3 years has done a nice job improving margins and same store sales comparables. Keep in mind much of this same store sales growth is attributable to sluggish performance in 2003/2004 as well as management simply closing non-performing stores. BAGL has extensive tax carry-forwards, meaning the bottom line here is greatly benefiting from not being taxed. Plugging in taxes, BAGL looks awfully pricey in range, especially keeping in mind past bankruptcy (for Einstein and Noah) and the not insignificant debt being carried on the books. Revenues have been stagnant, competition is fierce. BAGL to me looks to be a turn-around story at least fully valued in range.