Hedge fund hot-shot David Einhorn, the founder of Greenlight Capital, just made his huge investment pick at the annual Ira Sohn Investment Conference in New York. 

The stock he slammed is Martin Marietta Materials.  

As soon as he mentioned the company, its stock price instantly tanked 10%.

Check out a chart of stock here >

Trading in MLM has just resumed after the stock was halted.  The stock is currently trading down ~8%

Earlier, the rumor was he was going to be short Herbalife after the hedge fund manager asked a question on the company's most recent earnings call. 

However, Herbalife's stock is surging 9% today.

Einhorn is known for famously publicly shorted Lehman Brothers before the bank's demise and most recently Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. 

Here are some other highlights from his presentation: 

• He's short Amazon. 
• He loves Apple, says that the market cap could go to a trillion. 

Check here for our live coverage of the Ira Sohn Investment Conference >

Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Speaking at the Ira Sohn conference, David Einhorn slammed the company MLM.

This is what happened to the stock, instantly. Down 10%.

Intraday chart, via Bloomberg.

Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Earlier we should you a chart of MLM, a material stock that tanked after David Einhorn slammed it at the Ira Sohn conference.

But there was another stock that people were curious about, and that was Herbalife, a vendor of health products.

Remember, a few weeks ago, Herbalife shares tanked after David Einhorn, out of nowhere, asked some questions on the company conference call about its business model, causing people to assume that Einhorn was short the stock.

And there was a lot of buzz that today at Ira Sohn, Einhorn was going to unveil his anti-Herbalife call.

But he didn't! Despite a presentation that went over 130 slides, Einhorn never mentioned it all.

And that caused mega-relief among Herbalife investors.

The stock surged 20%!

In this chart below via stockcharts, you can see the big white bar shooting higher today.

One amusing thing: Herbalife sells its wares through multi-level marketing  (aka MLM), and the name of the ticker of the stock he is short is MLM. That appears to just be a coincidence.

For more on what's happening at Ira Sohn, see here >

Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Contra bond god Jeff Gundlach, investor David Einhorn is super-bullish on Apple, and thinks the market cap could go to $1 trillion.

From our liveblog of the Ira Sohn event, here are our notes on his explanation.

Some worry if Apple share price doubles, it will become a $1 trillion company. Einhorn said he consulted regulation, and there's no limit on $1 trillion market cap.

Many mistakenly assume Apple is a hardware company, but it's a software company. Its value comes from iOS, iTunes, iCloud. Future competitor of Apple has to make a product that's A LOT better.

"I believe Apple is software company that monetizes its value from repeated sales of high margin hardware," Einhorn says.

Hard time seeing how anyone rates Apple as below average.

So basically, people think of Apple as a hardware company and that's how its still misunderstood.

He also noted that the fact that SO MANY hedge funds own Apple is seen as a turnoff.

Worth noting that yesterday Einhorn's fund Greenlight disclosed a 1.4 million share holding in Apple

Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

When the world's top hedge fund managers speak, the market listens.

If you need proof, we attended the Ira Sohn Investment conference in New York yesterday where hundreds of investors doled out $3,000 (for charity) to hear the best and brightest hedge funders share their investment views and picks.

What's always fascinating about these exclusive conferences -- where people on their laptops and iPads listen to every word being said onstage -- is the intraday trading movements that take place once a hedge funder reveals his/her pick. 

The trend seems to be that when a fund manager says he/she is long a certain stock, you'll likely see an immediate spike in both the price and the trading volume in that particular stock.  

Likewise, when a fund manager says he/she is short a stock, the price tends to tank and the volume spikes, too.

We've compiled some of the stock picks (both long and short) that were mentioned at yesterday's event and we've also included the chart.  

Shortly after 12:40 p.m., Larry Robbins, the founder of Glenview Capital Management, said that he's long hospital stocks. Look what happened to Tenet Healthcare Corp's stock price around that 12:40ish mark. Even the volume spiked.

Robbins then said he was short ITC Holdings, an electric transmission operation company, around 12:50 p.m. The stock price dipped around that time and volume jumped.

At 1:20 p.m., Dwight Anderson, the managing partner of Ospraie Management, a fund that focuses on various commodity markets and basic industries, said he really likes WestLake Chemical Corp. The stock didn't make it into positive territory, but volume moved up and the stock pared some earlier losses.

Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.

Hedge fund god David Einhorn, the founder of Greenlight Capital, and his wife Cheryl were spotted together yesterday at the 17th annual Ira Sohn Investment Conference at Lincoln Center in New York.  

Our favorite part of the photo is that Einhorn, who was also wearing a nametag, was rocking a backpack. That's pretty badass for a billionaire hedge fund manager.

SEE: David Einhorn Slams New Company, Stock Instantly Tanks 10% >

SEE ALSO: Here's What Happens When Top Hedge Fund Managers Present Their Stock Picks At An Exclusive Conference >

Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Yesterday we spotted hedge fund hot-shot David Einhorn and his mother Nancy hanging out together before his massive investment presentation at the Ira Sohn Conference.

The Greenlight Capital CEO's wife, Cheryl, was also in attendance.   

SEE: David Einhorn Slams New Company, Stock Instantly Tanks 10% >

SEE ALSO: Here's What Happens When Top Hedge Fund Managers Present Their Stock Picks At An Exclusive Conference >

Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

The Apple Investor is a daily report from SAI. Sign up here to receive it by email.

AAPL Up As Facebook Dominates Headlines 
Markets are mixed on Facebook's debut. Shares of AAPL have been wavering but remain mostly in the positive as the tech tape is diving on Facebook's trades. This on the heals of dropping 2.5% yesterday. Do you think Apple's the better investment than Facebook? Upcoming events include Tim Cook's keynote at the D10 Conference on May 29 and Apple's developer conference (WWDC) is slated to start June 11. Investors remain focused on iPhone penetration globally and the anticipated launch of the next generation iPhone in the fall; iPad adoption; market share growth of the Mac business as well as the upcoming refresh; the introduction of the anticipated Apple TV set; and platforms such as Siri, iAd and iBooks. Shares of Apple trade at 8.2x Enterprise Value / Trailing Twelve Months Free Cash Flow (including long-term marketable securities), ridiculously low based on historical trends.

Apple Stock Losing Favor With Hedge Funds (Bloomberg)
Hedge funds sold a net 6.1 million shares of Apple last quarter, taking advantage of the 48% jump in the stock. Steve Cohen’s SAC Capital and Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global each sold more than 1 million shares of Apple in the first quarter, representing almost their entire stakes. Fund manager Jeff Gundlach thinks people will eventually be sick of Apple. Not all hedge funds were net sellers, however. David Einhorn, co- founder of Greenlight Capital, said Apple shares deserve to be higher. "Apple is the most misunderstood company in the market," Einhorn believes.

Samsung Takes A Hit On Rumor Apple Goes With Another Supplier (VentureBeat)
Samsung, which supplies some of Apple’s mobile parts, lost ~$10 billion in market cap recently after a report surfaced that Apple had taken some of its business elsewhere. Rumor has it Apple turned to the financially troubled Elpida for a large order of dynamic random access memory, or DRAM. The Japanese company, which recently filed for bankruptcy, could act as an agent for keeping competition high and prices low among Apple suppliers. And the move is already starting to take a toll on Apple’s current DRAM manufacturers.

Sprint Defends Upfront Payment For iPhone (Various via Scoople)
Sprint's deal with Apple for the iPhone will ultimately prove "quite profitable" for the carrier, says CEO Dan Hesse. He views his company's up front payment to offer the iPhone as a long-term investment, one that won't see any returns until 2015 (a virtual eternity in the mobile phone world). This comes after a less than stellar quarterly performance. Hesse is trying to quell shareholder discontent by publicly defending his decision. Customers will join Sprint to get the iPhone on an unlimited plan (versus AT&T and Verizon) and he hopes will stay.

Steve Jobs Was Involved With iPhone Redesign (Bloomberg)
Have no fear. The wizard himself was in on the redesign of this next iPhone. Apple began work on the next iPhone before the iPhone 4S was released in October. One source says that Jobs "played a key role in developing the phone" even though he was on medical leave. The report also confirms previous rumors that the next iPhone will feature a larger screen, though it doesn't specify the size.

iPhone Jumps To Nearly 8% Of All Mobile Phones Sold Worldwide (Gartner via modmyi)
Gartner announced its latest mobile device data for the first quarter of calendar 2012 and it found that Apple’s 33.1 million iPhones sold (to end users, not shipments) accounted for 7.9% of the total mobile phone market. Market growth, unsurprisingly, is being driven by smartphones with a total of 144.4 million smartphones sold to end users in the first quarter of 2012 and an increase of 44.7% year over year. Apple and Samsung account for 49.3% of all smartphone sales worldwide

China Mobile Still In Talks To Get The iPhone (Bloomberg)
It's been five years people. China Mobile, the world’s largest phone company by users, and Apple are in talks to offer the iPhone, the carrier’s new chairman said. But he can’t predict if the two sides will come to an agreement this year. China Mobile’s homegrown 3G service left it unable to offer popular handsets including Apple’s iPhone, offered by its domestic competitors China Unicom and China Telecom. "China Mobile and Apple both have the will to strengthen cooperation," Xi said. "When there is more specific news, we will disclose it." And when they do, Apple will sell a ton of iPhones.

More Rumors That The iPad Mini Is On Its Way (9to5Mac)
Taiwan-based publication The Liberty Times shared an interesting bit of information about the rumored iPad Mini. Apparently LG and AU Optronics were certified to supply the LCD panel for the new device. It goes on to claim that both manufacturers are working to ship the panels for production and for a release sometime during the latter half of 2012. The target-shipping amount for the iPad Mini is said to reach 6 million (which was previously reported), but there would likely be demand for more due to holiday sales.

Apple Rolling Out Retina Screen To MacBook, But What Will It Cost? (CNet)
Apple is said to be on the verge of rolling out new high-resolution displays for its MacBooks that, up until now, have only been available on its iPhones and iPads. And those panels are already in the supply chain. And the screens could cost nearly $100 more than Apple currently spends. What's unclear is if consumers will end up paying more for the improvements, and if they don't, will that eat into margin? When Apple made the jump to Retina Displays in its iOS devices, the cost of the device stayed the same. And another question remains; what is the benefit is for increasing pixel counts on the displays on notebooks? Is it really worth it.

Apple Highest Ranked Smartphone In Customer-Satisfaction (ComputerWorld)
Apple debuted in the top spot among mobile phone makers in a national customer-satisfaction survey, receiving a record-high score for the category. "Apple is head and shoulders above everyone else," said David VanAmburg, director of the American Customer Satisfaction Index. In the survey, based on interviews with approximately 70,000 American consumers throughout the last year, assigned Apple a satisfaction score of 83 out of a possible 100. HTC, LG and Nokia tied at second with a score of 75. Samsung managed a 71, while problem-plagued Research In Motion came in last with a score of 69.

Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

David Einhorn's hedge fund, Greenlight Capital, sent its first quarter letter to investors yesterday. In the letter, he defended the fund's position in Apple stock against those who think the stock is currently in a bubble (via @StreetSleuth).

Einhorn responded to four "common concerns" he's heard about holding the stock at these levels. Here are the arguments against Apple that he cites:

This is his language.

1. Too many hedge funds own AAPL.

2. If AAPL’s share price doubles, it will have a $1 trillion market capitalization, and everyone knows there can be no such thing as a $1 trillion company.

3. Motorola, Research in Motion and Nokia were all market leaders that proved unable to hold onto their dominant positions and healthy margins; this too will be AAPL’s fate.

4. AAPL can’t possibly maintain its current hyper-growth trajectory.

He takes these point by point, writing:

1. Too many funds. It’s not clear what the objection is here. We suppose the worry is that there is a herd mentality among hedge funds, and that when one fund sells, there could be a cascade of hedge funds selling shares and the stock price will collapse. Moreover, if everyone already owns AAPL, who is left to buy it? Collectively, hedge funds currently hold less than 5%2 of AAPL’s outstanding shares, and no hedge fund ranks among the top 40 holders of the stock. The average hedge fund has less than 2%2 of its equity assets in AAPL versus AAPL’s 4% weighting in the S&P 500, which means hedge funds are actually underweight AAPL.

2. A trillion dollars? We’ve scoured the Nasdaq listing rules, reviewed the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and engaged a leading numerologist. We can’t find any prohibition on trillion dollar market capitalizations.

3. All empires must fall. This concern, while not as arbitrary as the first two, reinforces our belief that the skeptics have a fundamental misunderstanding of AAPL. Their view suggests that AAPL is a hardware company. We disagree.

4. Growing pains. AAPL shares are not priced for growth. Its current valuation is justified without it.

Einhorn is adamant about Greenlight's continued position in Apple and believes that based on current valuation multiples, the stock is trading cheaply against the rest of the market, implying more upside from here.

Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital released their investor letter for the first quarter today, and as expected—stocks mentioned in the letter are making moves.

Einhorn was critical of his most famous short these days—Green Mountain Coffee—but also took time to renew his skepticism with the value of Florida real estate developer St. Joe's Company. Einhorn made headlines when he publicized his short on St. Joe's in 2010 and engaged in a very public fight with mutual fund manager Bruce Berkowitz, who is the majority shareholder of the company.

And investors seem to believe Einhorn's renewed emphasis on the weakness of St. Joe's—the stock has fallen nearly 6% today since the letter was made public.

In his letter, Einhorn said he doubted the effectiveness of the company's new 2012 business strategy, which he says is vague and hard to understand. In addition, he pointed to the fact that the best pieces of land owned by St. Joe's have already been sold or developed, and what is left are lands under conservations laws that cannot be used and thus have very little underlying value. 

Judging from the market, it looks like Einhorn: 1, St. Joe's: 0 right now. We're waiting for the company (and maybe Florida based investor Bruce Berkowitz) to strike back.

Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital unveiled a big boost in its position in computer hardware maker Seagate Technology, and as expected with Einhorn's magic touch—the stock is rallying.

Greenlight's latest 13-F from May reported that he owned 14.5 million shares of the company, but Seagate just revealed in a new filing that Greenlight has increased their position to 23 million shares [h/t MarketWatch]. That's about 5.4% of the company.

Although Seagate's stock closed down for the day, the new filing has sent shares up in after-market trading. It is now up 2.5%.

The move wasn't exactly unexpected, Einhorn praised Seagate in Greenlight's annual investor letter released last month, saying the company was expecting increased revenue because it would be able to charge higher prices on its hardware sales due to a recent shortage in the industry, and that an imminent stock repurchasing program would increase earnings per share in the future.

SEE ALSO: A Florida Real Estate Company Is TANKING After Being Blasted By David Einhorn In His Latest Letter

Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Remember David Einhorn's epic presentation at this year's Ira Sohn Conference?

The famed hedge funder presented so many bearish and bullish cases in a 20-minute speed-read that left investors in attendance in a haze. 

Many remembered his bearish calls on construction company Martin Marietta (which fell 10% within minutes of Einhorn's call) and Amazon, and his bullish case for Apple.

But it's his most overlooked short call on United States Steel Corp. that's panning out the most successfully, according to Reuters.

Since Einhorn's presentation, where he pointed to the steel company's low earnings, high pension costs and weak demand from China, U.S. Steel's stock has dropped 23.1%.

Comparatively, Martin Marietta is down only 8.5% and Amazon is down 0.8% since the conference on May 16, according to Reuters.

Wanna hear about his most famous bull-case? DAVID EINHORN: Here's Why Apple Is Misunderstood, And Could Be Worth $1 Trillion

Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Greenlight Capital chief David Einhorn has ponied up for the $1 million buy-in table at the World Series of Poker, BusinessWeek's Mason Levinson reports.

He will donate any winnings to the non-profit group City Year, Levinson writes.

Einhorn finished 18th in the World Series of Poker’s main event in 2006. He also played in last year's tournament, making it to Day 2

He'll be playing in Vegas this year July 1. 

SEE MORE — The 20 Biggest Poker Players on Wall Street

Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Watch out.

David Einhorn, a well-known poker fanatic and regular participant in the World Series of Poker, entered a $1 MILLION (!) buy-in poker tournament, and he's already making a big run.

From WSOP.com, he's in 4th place currently, with a stack of chips now with $4.4 million. UPDATE: He's now in 3rd place, with $5.4 million chips.

Other huge names in the tournament: Daniel Negreaunu, Phil Ivey, Dan Shak, and Phil Hellmuth.

UPDATE: You can read about the hand where Einhorn got a huge boost to his chips here.

You can get live chipcounts here.

(Via Doug Kass and Amy Calistri)

Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Thanks to @Microfundy for pointing out that @davidein is David Einhorn, and that he's tweeting his World Series of Poker experience.

It looks like Greenlight Capital's founder, who has more than 1,200 followers, has been on Twitter since 2009, but he just started being active again. 

He even Tweets out pictures.  Here's one of his wife, Cheryl. 

Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Hedge fund titan David Einhorn, the founder of Greenlight Capital, is currently playing in the World Series of Poker $1-million buy-in tournament. Here's currently playing at the table that's streaming at WSOP.com.

Others at the table include Phil Ivey, Phil Hellmuth, and Gus Hansen.

Check him out below rocking some orange attire. 

Click here to get the live video >

Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Hedge fund manager David Einhorn, the founder of Greenlight Capital, is on Twitter @davidein and he's been live Tweeting throughout the World Series of Poker tournament. 

Einhorn, who now has more than 2,600 followers (he had just over 1,200 yesterday), only follows one person and his name is Daniel Roitman @droitman. 

Roitman is the Chief Operating Officer at Greenlight and he's been working at Einhorn's hedge fund since 2003, according to his bio on Bloomberg BusinessWeek.  He is also Einhorn's fraternity brother in the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.

Prior to Greenlight, Roitman worked at Goldman Sachs where he joined the bank in 1996 as a technical architect developing the firm's risk management systems.  He moved up the ranks to a vice president in 1998.  In 2000, he moved to Goldman's technology strategy group and later joined the equities division business development group in 2002.  

Roitman began his career as a consultant at Andersen Consulting, which later became Accenture. 

He graduated with a degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University.  He finished his bachelor's in just three and a half years, so he decided to go ahead an get his master's in electrical engineering from Cornell, too, according to a profile on Cornell's site.  

He also has his MBA in finance from NYU Stern.   

Sadly, his Twitter account is private. 

Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Hedge fund titan David Einhorn, the founder of Greenlight Capital, is competing on the final table of the $1 million buy-in charity tournament of the World Series of Poker. 

The hedge fund manager is currently in 6th place and the winner of the tournament will be awarded $18.3 million, according to ESPN.

Today Einhorn is rocking a red track jacket with his name monogrammed on it and a baseball cap and sunglasses.  Yesterday he was wearing orange. 

Watch him walk in to the sound of drums and cheers.

Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

David Einhorn, the brains behind hedge fund Greenlight Capital, finished in third place in what may have been the biggest poker game of all time. 

His winnings totaled $4,352,000, all of which he'll donate to City Year, a charity focused on education.

Here's how Einhorn's final hand went down according to PokerNews.com.

48 players paid $1,000,000 each to play in the tournament dubbed "The Big One." This was the biggest buy-in for a tournament in recorded history.

The winner, poker pro Antonio Esfandiari, walked away with a jaw-dropping $18.3 million.

Here's Einhorn walking to the final table.

Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

We're right in the thick of the World Series of Poker, which means we're right in the thick of one of Wall Street's favorite past-times.

And this year has been no exception; finance guys have already made quite the splash over the past few weeks. Hedge funder David Einhorn took third place in the most expensive tournament ever and JPMorgan VIX trader Jeremy Wien has been tweeting up a storm about his game. 

We figured it was only right to update our list of these poker-playing Wall Streeters.

Cliff Asness, AQR Capital

Asness' poker game was also brought into the limelight in the book 'Quants,' which devoted a chapter to an epic Wall Street poker night at the St. Regis hotel. Attendees also included Peter Muller, Ken Griffin and Boaz Weinstein, among others. 

Today, Asness is a member of the committee that organizes this now-annual poker night, which benefits the Math for America foundation. 

Ken Griffin, Citadel

Griffin was also a part of that 2006 Wall Street poker night and now serves as the honorary chair of the annual Math for America poker tournament. 

Chris Fargis, Toro Trading

Fargis, unlike our other choice players, came to finance by way of poker. The young Brooklyn-native caught the attention of an online poker competitor, who recommended him for a trading job with Toro. 

Although Fargis had made quite the name for himself (and not to mention some pretty good money) in the online poker circuit, it seems like he's thrown in the towel. 

From Fargis' blog "Twenty-One Outs Twice":

Good luck to all my friends playing the Main Event!
It's been two years since I posted anything here. I don't play any poker these days. However, life is very good.

 Glad to hear life is good, even without poker. 

Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.