(Bloomberg) -- The head of investment research at Bridgewater Associates, the world’s biggest hedge fund, said the perception of the firm’s recent wagers against certain European equities is off-base.
“The public perception of our bets is extremely misleading,” Karen Karniol-Tambour said in an interview on Bloomberg Television Thursday. “We take views on a whole range of markets and implement them through a whole range of instruments, and anything that’s disclosed is actually a very, very small subset of those instruments in those markets where we have disclosure requirements.”
The $160 billion Bridgewater, which was founded by Ray Dalio, has made $19.65 billion in short wagers against some of Europe’s biggest stocks, according to institutional gross short selling data from regulatory filings. Only clients and Bridgewater executives are privy to the firm’s full range of investments, which may include long positions that it hasn’t had to disclose. It also may have purchased call options or used other derivatives to make sure it benefits from positive developments in the Eurozone.
“Understandably, you’re looking at a very, very thin slice that doesn’t really represent the holistic set of positions, and often it’s just one side of a trade, and so you’re really seeing something that gives a misleading picture of what our views really are,” said Karniol-Tambour.
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