What are some of the weirdest things owned by hedge funds?
According to investopedia, these are some of the strangest assets owned by hedge funds:
Neverland Ranch
Michael Jackson’s former home and fantasy playground is owned by a hedge fund called Colony Capital LLC. Â No one knows what they plan to do with it but the gossip is that they plan to turn it into you guessed it, an amusement park.
The Weather
I bet you didn’t know that you could own the weather. Well you can’t own the weather but you can trade derivatives contracts based on it. These derivatives are useful if you are growing oranges and want to protect yourself against the risk of frost or if you are buying electricity and want to guard against an unusually hot summer. But believe it or not, weather derivatives are an $11 billion market.
Jails
Aptly named Pirate Capital owned a piece of a company called Cornell which runs prisons. Talk about interesting incentives, owner’s of privately owned prisons usually make more money when occupancy goes up. But to get occupancy to go up they need higher crime rates, not exactly what you might want to see in your community.