i'm leslie picker, wisconsin. >>> sales for the further 11th campbell's food. the food company mk peckations and it's struggling to lift revenue as changing consumer preferences and competition pressure soup sales. the company said a dispute with a retailer over promotiona fell. >>> profits also fell dollar general. the results though still topped estimates. revenue and same store expectat shares fell 5% to 72.56. and the networking equipment maker, siena, beat street expectations and picked up market share in the latest quarter, but the company reported weak sales guidance and that pressured shares they fell to $21.61 and wells fargo fake accounts scandal we've told you u about may be more scandalous than thought. the bank said an independent 1.5 million more fake ered account, bringing the total to 3 3.5 million. the shares news. >>> and amazon is facing a lawsuit from a couple who claims they damaged their eyes after purchasing defective solar eclipse glasses. prior to the eclipse, amazon had recalled some of the glasses, a recommend manufacturer. shares ros

leslie picker is in london at the third largest hedge fund in the world. >> reporter: it looks like your typical guitar lesson. but it's taking place inside man group, the world's third largest hedge fund. the student leads investment strategy for their quant fund, a hedge fund strategy reliant on computers to trade. many of their employees are mathematicians building algorithms. to clear their heads, they go to the music room. man group invests $40 billion as part of its quant strategy. they're one of the earliest adopters of quant starting 30 years ago. the amount of assets in quant have doubled since 2009. the largest hedge fund companies in the world employ their strategies. even retail money managers like blackrock and state street have been using more technology for their products. that just adds to the competitive pressure for a firm like man. to get ahead, they've been focused on the new frontier of quant, machine learning. the firm's chief investment officer says with machine learning, the computers don't have to be told how or what to trade. they do it of themselves. >> a good

who will come out on top as humans face off against machines leslie picker is in london with the details. hi, leslie >> reporter: hey, melissa. that's right, we're here at the world's third largest head fund. after their assets are in quant which historically has been in a black box. this is man's attempt to explain the small subset of data that the computers are sifting through day in and day out now, this is something that they have used to explain the process to lps it doesn't explain whether technology doesn't provide the edge that it does in the rest of the world. if you look at returns over the one-year, three-year, and five-year time horizon, they tend to overperform the broader industry why what it built up $1 trillion in assets? it tends to provide more stability in the long run as well as downside protection. and we spoke with the ceo yesterday who told us it's the humans who provide that big outsize returns where is it's the computers that produce smaller amounts of alpha but greater differs fictiversificat. >> humans are really good at getting a big edge on trades but not ver

our leslie picker is watching that leslie >> that's right.ting with investors in new york today and those in boston tomorrow. pitching a concept that is never really been done before. if he successful, it could alter the way private companies especially venture backed companies tap the markets. the firm social capital are asking investors to essentially write a $500 million blank check. this type of vehicle is known as a special purpose acquisition company or spac. investors give them the money up front and they then use it to acquire startups ownersst target business would exchange their shares for shares of the spac and this allows the target to be public without marketing road show and reporting expenses i'm told by sources that early feedback from the so-called testing the waters meetings was very strong and it makes sense startups have been avoiding ipos or seeking alternative ways for getting public for years now his perspective is highlights he issues with the traditional processing including manage ment distraction and the difficulty

for more on today's events, let's get to leslie picker at the hotel where the conference is taking place. >> reporter: hey, melissa. we're hearing several people talking about whether we're in a bond bubble or not when it comes to the buzz y tech names, there wasn't much in the way of criticism here is tiger management's julian robertson >> the apples, the facebooks, the googles, those great growth companies, are priced cheaper than they would have ever been in the '60s, '70s, and '80s. >> reporter: jim chanos presented a new idea, taking aim at tesla, a company he urged investors to short last year but it's run up quite substantially since then >> this is a good exactly of cult stock, i think it's fair to say, in the market, where the market will look at anything the way it wants to in a glass half full kind of mode. >> reporter: leon cooperman of omega says united airlines is a $100 stock and it will take 18 months to get there, that's a 63% upside to where the stock closed today >> united, i think it's fair to say, has been somewhat undermanaged until 18 months ago. in the past year o

. >>> leslie picker joins us now with some other highlights of delivering alpha it started at about 80 and went straight through. >> a lot of highlights, cautious sentiment surrounding equity evaluations. leon cooperman of omega advisers was more optimistic saying the stock market is fair, it's in line with earnings growth, and he said that we're returning to normalcy and that bonds are in a bubble but stocks are not. >> it was a little bit like somebody had a foot on the throat of the economy, that foot has been taken off the throat of the economy. people are more optimistic about business outlook i think i constructive you have to be careful we don't become too xexuberant in our valuation of the future. >> he gave some picks, first data, hess, wpx energy >> he did say he's thinking there could be a 5% to 8% pullback at any point. >> he did say earlier in the year he expected equity evaluations to be flat for about six months he talked about different risks to the geopolitical risk was a big topic of conversation we saw however as we heard about geopolitical risks and tax reform, mar

. >> a lot of highlights for more on that we go to leslie picker hey, leslie. >> hey, carl, how is it going? several take aways, alpha is back how to deliver that, a bit up for debate how to find such performance in silicon valley. >> all these businesses fundamentally under duress the idea that alpha is back is true the lens with which we go about finding it is through that he lens of technology we think it's the trail of breadcrumbs that help us understand where value is allocated, which by implication means values destroyed and long the former and short the latter? >> palihapitiya was long bitcoin which jamie dimon said was a fraud. >> if you were in venezuela or ecuador, or north korea, you're better off probably using bitcoin than their currency. that can't possibly true in the united states unless you're speculating. that isn't a reason for value, because other people's speculate. that's tulip like i said, the other reason, used for purposes, not a real thing. eventually it will be emperor clothes. >> compared to 17th vengery often referred to as the first speculative bubble guy

leslie picker joins us what was it, leslie? >> reporter: hey, kelly, that's right.rt idea is continental resources and a basket of other names. continental resources dipped on chanos' presentation he points to accounting, says thi after things like interest and taxes there's notholders under optimistic assumptions said most of what comes out of the ground gets put back in. calls it a never ending cycle of boom and bust. >> we saw who was swimming naked as the tide came out the problem is that in our view, people have been looking at this industry through the rose-colored glasses of wall street >> reporter: he said wall street is adding back in depreciation and amortization and capitalizing those just as they did with another pharmaceutical name he mentioned last year at delivering alpha, that name was valient, down 50% since then, guys. >> all right, leslie, thank withdrew veyou very much zbhnchs breaking news on walt disney. >> big news if you're a star wars fan, delaying the release of star wars episode 9 to december 2019 to may 2019. part of an update for disney'

. >>> welcome back let's send it over to leslie picker for an earnings report. >> that's right.et verifone is first. it's quite down significantly. their earnings were in line with estimates. the revenues beat slightly the estimates, but it's really the guidance here. the q4 guidance was below estimates of 470 million to 473 million on the revenue side versus 475 million, that's what analysts were anticipating and on the earnings side they were -- they said it would be 43 cents a share adjusted versus the analyst estimates of 46 cents per share estimates i also want to get to red fin, a company that went public a few months ago soared 45% in its debut and now you can see shares are down slightly on their earnings report that's because oftentimes when you see shares soaring on an ipo they expect a pretty significant beat on earnings estimates that wasn't really the case in the quarter. red fin, their earnings were in line with estimates at about six cents adjusted per share revenues beat so back over to you. kell >> all right red fin down 1%. leslie, thank you. i won't go into a

leslie picker has the key highlights >> i would relive it, too but we'll go over what happened yesterday. there was a big debate over bitcoin which gets to the heart of what you and seema both covered. some saying it was fraud and calling it an emperor with no clothes. >> governments, first thing they like to do is control a currency who has it, twr shg, where it e it's going china is closing down the bitcoin exchanges. bitcoin, the bigger these things get, the more -- right now governments look at it as a novelty. wait until someone gets hurt, it's used for illicit purposes, they will close it down. that's my point. >> now, social capital took the opposite view, saying he was massively long >> is it a fraud >> no. absolutely not >> will it blow up >> no t cannot blow up what countries can constrain today is how it's traded but it's a system that is peer to peer. to the extent you can eliminate the will and actions of every single person in the world you can eliminate it in the absence of that, the genie is out of the bottle, whether we like it or not. >> barry sternlink was on the panel

leslie picker has more >> reporter: we are here at man group, the world's third largest hedge fund whatou see behind me looks like a trading floor these guys look like traders, but it's not and they're not they're coders, they're sifting through research, creating ail go rhythms that do the trading this is known as a quant strategy, which has historically been a black box here at mann group they have a lovely screen that visualizes what the computers are doing these days, when you think of a hedge fund, this may be what you need to be thinking about. it has seen quite the resurgence recently it's doubled assets since 2009 last year they saw inflows when others saw outflows. the five largest hedge funds in the world are quaunt strategies. the surge in popularity created some concerns that we could see another quaunt quake that's what happened in 2007 when some of the big quaunt funds unwound and caused a demise within the industry we spoke yesterday with mann group's cio who says he doesn't see one of these around the corner but he did list out specific dangers to quaunt strategies which

it that includes london-based -- leslie picker is in london with a look another what happened. >> reporter: hey, kelly, that's right, it's just past 58 p.m. here in london and the trading floor has cleared out but the machines are still hard at work. this screen behind me is just a small subsoeet of the millions pieces of data that the computers are sifting through and trading. mangroup manages about $40 billion this way it's been a so-called quant fund for 30 years over the past three years, machine learning, to help support its trading. yesterday we spoke with the cio who told us that machine learning has produced alpha beyond that of traditional quant. >> we view it as a way of finding pat teterns where we dot direct the machine exactly where to look, a good example might be if you want machines to buy on dips, then it's sometimes quite hard to describe a dip perfectly, but the machine learning will just look for patterns of what dips look like and what happened next. >> reporter: he wouldn't be surprised if in five years half of man's hls assets or training was supported by machine lea

seth, one of the most noted stock pickers of all time, leslie picker with headquarters at what's behind>> reporter: is it ever a bad thing to have too much money well, if you're a hedge fund these days, the trend is to try to get smaller and may mean returning capital to investors the latest to do so as you mentioned, seth klarman. so source tells me the firm's assets have grown too quickly due to come pounding no longer in balance with the opportunity set they see in the market my source says boupost is holding less than half of its assets in cash about 42%. but this isn't the first time baupost returned capital to investors. they gave money back in 2010 and 2013 as well and baupost is not the only one value act said in the spring that it would return about $1.25 billion to investors over concerns that valuations have gotten too expensive and then a few months later, global investors led by andreas decided to return $8 billion to investors after his chief investment officer daniel sunhein left the firm. tomorrow as you know is the delivering alpha conference, asset managers with trilli

leslie picker, you were there all day. >> it was a great conference alpha is pack. you just need to know where to look for it, and luckily some of the speakers provided some includes jim chanos announced he was short continental resources and several other exploration and production companies without really naming the other ones but did say most of what comes out of the ground, most money that comes out of the ground is put back in because cap "x" is so high these days. he said after taking out interest and taxes there's not a lot left for shareholders even as production has picked back up and prices have recovered. >> we saw who was swimming naked as the tide came out the problem is that in our view people have been looking at this industry through the rose-colored glasses of wall street. >> he said there were similar discrepancies with valiant, a name he named at last year's delivering alpha which has since plummeted and there was a lot of where and how to invest in tech. julian robertson says market valuations as a whole were very high and worries about a bubble

our list leslie picker joins use now. >> lots to talk about, valuation and risk to the market the needor hedge fund strategies particularly unconstrained strategies now ray dalio spoke about his main concerns for the market, in particular talking about the wealth gap, social conflicts and burdens in the form of debt and pensions he also reiterated that investors should put about 5% to so% of their assets into gold but said that that's not necessarily because it's the best asset to be in, but because it's a diverse fire which is important given the risks he sees in the market steve schwarzman of the blackstone said equity valuations were very high and that the biggest risk was geopolitical take a listen. >> the issue is geopolitical, and -- and there are some bad things going on in the world, and a conventional analysis says things will be fine, but -- but, you know, whether it's north korea, whether it's trade, there are a number of issues that people don't want to focus on because the outcome would be really bad >> jorgan's mary erdoes says based on analytics that her firm conducted t

leslie picker has the latest on this saga. >> hey, andrew >> good morning. >> pelt sz is calling forbe a leanholding company with three distinct business units underunderneath. peltz wants more oversight on the company's cost savings plan and why as he says the innovation machine is broken according to peltz the last biggest hit was the swiffer. he wants the company to focus on smaller brands and adapt to changing consumer preferences. he was critical of ceo david taylor but stopped short of calling for his removal. he wants more recruiting from the outside. his goal, he says, is for 25 of the top 100 executives to have significant experience outside of p&g in response to peltz white paper p&g said it will review the document in more detail but added trian has an outdated view of our company taylor is set to peek speak at a conference in about an hour and a half we'll monitor that hopefully hear more from him then. >>> do you think there's a chance that he somehow jawbones his way on to this board >> there's absolutely a chance one thing to keep in mine if this does reach a proxy fig

leslie picker joins us with some of the highlights. >> we saw the conclusion of the ed show with ed green. ceo trian. we don't usually see the company he's invested in together on the stage. they discussed it with portfolio changes ahead of the company's three-way split. he had more choice words for another company they have invested in, p & g take a listen. >> p & g talking, making a lot of statements that are rhetoric and disconnected from reality. part of what the proxy fight will do is put a spotlight on those issues the intention is not to embarrass people the intention is not to fire people you saw this the intention is to put a spotlight on the problems so that a lot of smart people get around a table, jim, and debate the effects. >> the morning opened with steven mnuchin reiterating tax reform without the numbers the market was looking for he said they could get tax reform done, but didn't specify what that magic rate would be. >> i'm not going to comment on what's a win and what's not a win. as i have said, this is a pass/fail exercise passing tax reform, which hasn't been done i

leslie picker joins us with that story. leslie >> reporter: hey, david.ou all to the light cube this year it's right smack dab in the middle of man's offices each of these dots shows the performance of an underlying strategy or market that they're trading in at any time the green dots indicate positive performance, negative is the red dots here. performance is a key theme that keeps cropping up in the quant industry when you look at the returns over the short and long term, one year, three year, five years, they do tend to under perform the broader hedge fund industry as a whole. as you mentioned, david, there is a study that man put together which adjusted for certain factors which did show that quant outperformed luke ellis, he talked about the future of hedge funds as a convergence between man and machi machine. >> a good computer will always beat a good human, but a good human with a good computer will beat a computer at chess if you try to do everything manually, you are going to get beaten by people who use quant technology >> so with all of this un

those who are doing it are putting the men to shame leslie picker looking at female return in the hedge> hey, that's right, a small group but a standout run one for 2017, women producing double the returns of the broader industry for the first eight months of the year according to hfr. hfrx women index jumped 10.95% in the year, that compares with their broader gauge of hedge fund performance up 5.36%. however, both of those returns trailed the s&p 500 up about 12% over the same time period. still, this is shaping up to be a big year for women hedge fund managers, producing the most returns of any year over the last decade. additionally when comparing their returns over a longer period of time, they consistently beat out the broader hedge fund indexes and yet there are so few women portfolio managers at hedge fund one study found only one in 20 firms employ women pms those include oak hill, blue mounta mountain others attribute it to the lack of women who study math and finance, guys. >> it's so hard to get there as a woman, i bet the very best who get there and hence why there's maybe

it's just irritating the heck out of me >> we have some breaking news on facebook let's get to leslie picker, kelly. that's right we've got some new news on this case regarding mark zuckerberg and his third class of shares he's issuing earlier today we had learned that that case had been settled. that was incorrect, kelly. in fact, facebook has decided not to issue that third class of shares we have a statement from mark zuckerberg where he says, "over the past year and a half, facebook's business has performed well and the value of our stock has grown to the point i can fully fund our philanthropy and retain voting control of facebook for 20 years or more. as a result, i've asked or board to withdraw the proposal to reclassify our stock and the board has agreed." now, this is ahead of a trial that was set to begin next week, mark zuckerberg was due to take the stand on tuesday in the case where shareholders were suing to block the issuance of this third class, this class "c" shares that facebook was issuing which they said would give mark zuckerberg too much in the way of voting control wit

as we roll into fall, there's another hedge fund shutting down leslie picker joins us with the detailsorter: pine river's flagship fund the latest victim in the struggling industry i'm told by two people with knowledge of the matter that it's shutting down after facing about $700 million worth of redemptions. that would be about 70% of the remaining assets in the fund so the firm decided to shutter it after 15 years. performance for the fund had been in the black this year up 1.7% through august. performance was also positive in 2016 both of those, of course, still trailed the s&p 500. pine river still has other funds, including several permanent capital vehicles this is, as you mentioned, just the latest in a string of closures it follows hugh hendry's announcement last week he'd be closing his first eclectica and andy hall announced he'd be closing astenbeck. the city saw findustry saw fewe sures during the second quarter. fell to 222, decline from the prior quarter and same quarter last year. at the same time, hedge fund launches totaled 180 compared with 170 during the second quart

guys >> leslie, thank you leslie picker in london for us >>> coming up when we return, the ice bucket was a fund raiser thfor als that went viral and raised more than $2 million. up next, we'll talk to the author of a new book about the phenomenon that turned clicks into dollars first a quick check on what's happening in european markets right now. when this bell rings... ...it starts a chain reaction... ...that's heard throughout the connected business world. at&t network security helps protect business, from the largest financial markets to the smallest transactions, by sensing cyber-attacks in near real time and automatically deploying countermeasures. keeping the world of business connected and protected. that's the power of and. >> even if you're not on facebook, you probably remember the ice bucket challenge that went viral in 2014 with roughly ten billion total views. these krips turned into research dollars for lou gehrig's disease and helped raise more than $200 million, partially funding the first fda approved drug for als in more than 20 years. joining us right now is dave

. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> well, procter & gamble is taking aim at nelson peltz leslie picker has the story. >> then one key question, why not just add peltz to the board. to that p&g said we've done our homework on peltz, the results are not good now cnbc has reviewed the contents of that homework among the highlights, p&g dug into how trian's larger investments performed relative to the s&p 500. they say he tends to buy when undervalued, outperform one week through his stake when he exists, and underperform one year after peltz exists. they also were seeking to show the difference between what he says and what happens. they gave examples such as at heinz where he said he could increase gross margins by 200 basis points, and they remained unchanged. and then at wendy's, he focused on divestiture, that happened, but then they merged with arby's they said many of the best investments were where he did not hold a board seat. this is the largest company to ever face an activist. >> it shows what a large company can do in terms of fighting back this is an aggressive fight you don't generally see. >> a

leslie picker is checking out the alpha politics good morning >> it's hard to think of a time when thection between wall street and washington is less pronounced than today that makes the delivering alpha conference on tuesday such an important event. the speakers include some of the most legendary investors and since the election some of them have been circling the political sphere whether with words or wallets. ray dalio has been vocal against the rise of populism and the political risks related to north korea and washington he's urging investors to put 10% of their investments into gold to hedge these risks jamie dimon will also be attending. he's been increasingly critical of the white house speaking out on topics from charlottesville to the dreamers. also at delivering alpha, steve schwartzman will be speaking for the first time since the advisory council he led for the president was disbanded following the deadly events in virginia plenty to talk about >> i think there will be a lot of political conversations >> hard to avoid them. >> i hope to get some ideas about where we actua

with a little bit of breaking news this morning in the ongoing saga between bill ackman and adp leslie pickere detai details. >> adp is firing back out with a 69-page presentation, in response to pershing square's 167-page presentation last month. some key things to point out, pershing squares owns both options and shares to comprise its share stake, but ackman only has 2% that's confirming reporting by our david faber yesterday. the rest are in options with a much higher cost basis with about $116 per share, $8 higher than that of common stock. now, action dp says it's cost an about $2 billion to convert those options to shares. this whole situation is highly unusual and significant because the record date has passed, meaning that ackman can only vote 2% worth of his share ifs this gets to a proxy contest so this signals that he was aiming for a settlement here, but it appears he may not get that and adp exposed some details on pershing square's new compensation structure now his investors will pay 30% performance fees on returns greater than 5%. before, they charged 20% on positive returns