Business

Steven Cohen's veteran top trader is leaving, just months before the formerly-barred hedge fund manager is expected to resume managing outside investor money.

As the NYT's Matt Goldstein reports, Phil Villhauer, 52, who started working for Cohen's then-SAC Capital in 2002, was promoted to global head of trading at the successor company, Point72, shortly after Cohen was forced to stop accepting outside investors’ money as part of an insider trading settlement with federal authorities, converting his hedge fund into an $11 billion family office.

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

This past weekend, I discussed what appears to be the markets ongoing melt-up toward its inevitable conclusion. Of course, that move is supported by the last of the “holdouts” that finally capitulate and take the plunge back into a market that “can seemingly never go down.” But therein lies the danger. To wit:

It appears that "fake news" has finally made it to the news wires.

For the first time since June 2015, Alibaba is now bigger (in market cap) than Amazon.com...

Authored by John Rubino via DollarCollapse.com,

Stocks are at record highs while volatility is at a record low. Which is another way of saying that investors aren’t as worried as they probably should be about the coming year.

That’s okay. Price corrections (with their attendant volatility spikes) are normal and natural ways for markets to teach overconfident investors a little humility. Think of them as the financial word’s forest fires, clearing out the underbrush of misconception, malinvestment, and hubris.