Kingpin investors raise energy stakes - Kansas City Business Journal:

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A bevy of high-profile asset managersx and hedge fund gurus returned to buyinhg mode after taking financial lumps in the second half of 2008 when the valu of energy company shares tanked alongt with the price of oil andnatural gas. Prominent investors such as all-star asset manager Paul Tudor Jones, energ maverick T. Boone Pickens and hedge fund investor George Soros dippefd their toes in the energy pool once agaihn and grabbed multiple stakes in Houston according to regulatory statements filedthis month. who oversees Tudor Investment Corp.
, founr bargains in 10 Houston-basef energy companies or major players with a significant presence in the and also took a new position in WasteManagementt Inc., still a big favorite of Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Pickens, who has spent the past 12 months lobbying for his plan to help the country kick the importedoil habit, stillp knows a fossil-fuel bargain when he sees one. The Texa s oil maven took new positions in a wide rangse of energy companieswith beaten-downb stock prices at the end of 2008, a year that the bellwether Philadelphia Oil Service Index dipped nearly 60 percent. Pickens dabble in services players such asSchlumbergetr Ltd. and Halliburton Co.
, natural gas shale producer ChesapeakEnergy Corp. and high-profil e exploration and production company AnadarkoPetroleumk Corp. Soros took even bigger bites in the gaining new positions in services players Nabors Industries Ltd. and Weatherford International Inc. after selling off his Schlumbergerstake — while addintg to his position in . Besidews his substantial switch into Soros made another big move in late Aprio involvinga Houston-based company by adding 3 million more shares of Plainsz Exploration and Production Co., boostinh his stake to nearly 6.
5 million Energy analysts and asset investment managere who follow these movers and shakers say that after energy stoc k prices kept climbing in 2007 toward loft highs in mid-2008, it’sa been a while since the notiohn of value investing could be applied to the sector. “Timingy is everything,” says Eddie senior partner with Eagle GlobalAdvisorsd LLC. “There may have been an over-reaction in the fall with the sell-ofc of oil stocks. There’s stilp a lot of volatility to deal but these investors did well in anticipating therise (in oil that we’ve seen so far this from the mid-$30s to $60.
” Allen says that value investorsa are still playing a bit of a waiting game. He notes that stock pricez are down, natural gas has not followed oil’s recovery in 2009, and there are concernsx that prices could stay depressed asinventoriew build. There is also more speculation, he about possible consolidationas mid-ca exploration and production companies eye the pickings among smallerd competitors. Dan Pickering, co-president and head of researchgat Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. Securitiezs Inc., says Pickens, Soros and Tudor might have even added more shares during the quarteer if energy stocks had not rallied and moved a bit higherthan expected.
“The market took off so stronglyh in the first quarterr that investors took a pause waiting for a pullback thatnevere came. They might have wanted more but the stock s got away a little bit onthe upside,” Pickering All things considered, energy was the hottest investment game in Says Pickering: “The overall theme here is that investorxs became reengaged in energy, which dramatically out-performed the rest of the market in the first as people were just less terrified about the stated of the world The energy resurgence party had some notabl no-shows. While Pickens and Soroas were pickingnew favorites, other big-namde investors were still cleaning house.
Warrejn Buffett sold 13.7 million ConocoPhillips shareas in the quarter to reduce his stakee to a stillsizable 71.2 million Buffet conceded to shareholders of his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. asset management firm that his huge investment in ConocoPhillipz last year when oil pricee peakedat $147 a barrel was a mistake.