The average hedge fund just enjoyed its best start to a year in more than 20, rising 6.1% in the first quarter. Not only is that its best quarterly return since the turn of the century, it even managed what feels like a rarer feat: Beating the broader markets by nipping the S&P 500, which managed only a 5.8% Q1.

How a $2.8 Billion Fine Added $40 Billion to Alibaba [WSJ]Investors seem relieved that Beijing hasn’t done anything worse to China’s e-commerce champion after its dramatic fall from political favor…. While the fine—equivalent to 4% of Alibaba’s domestic annual sales—was higher than expected, investors are probably happy that the company’s fundamental business model remains intact. There are no forced divestitures or substantial changes to its corporate structure. The fact that Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms are popular among consumers probably counted in its favor with Beijing. Daniel Zhang, Alibaba’s chief executive, said Monday in a conference call that he didn’t expect a material impact on business operations.

Activist Trian Fund Management Takes Stake in Comcast [WSJ]Trian has accumulated about 20 million shares in Philadelphia-based Comcast, for a roughly $900 million stake or about 0.4% of the company, a person familiar with the matter said. Comcast’s market value is about $200 billion.Executives at Trian, which was founded by Nelson Peltz, Ed Garden and Peter May, recently began conversations with Comcast management, the hedge fund said in a statement Monday….“The cable business is an infrastructure asset with steady growth and very high free cash flow,” said MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett, referring to Comcast’s broadband, pay-TV and phone unit. “The other two businesses, Sky and NBC, are sort of cyclical turnaround stories. They naturally appeal to entirely different types of investors.”He added: “I can’t imagine a shareholder that would disagree that this company would be valued more highly if it were separated into pieces.”

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, is the agency within the Treasury Department charged with combating money laundering, terrorist financing, and other financial crimes. It collects millions of these suspicious activity reports, known as SARs…. What it does not do is force the banks to shut the money laundering down….

For more than a year, BuzzFeed News and its partner news organizations across the world mined the information on these tens of thousands of pages to map more than 200,000 transactions…. Western banks could have blocked almost any of them, but in most cases they kept the money moving and kept collecting their fees.

Mr. Milton said he offered to resign to shift the focus away from the company, and the board accepted. He added in a statement posted on his Twitter account early Monday that he intended to defend himself against “false allegations leveled against me by outside detractors….” His decision to resign came abruptly, following a turbulent period for Nikola, in which the company’s stock has lost about one-fifth its value since the Hindenburg report was released. The stock was down more than 21% in late morning trading Monday.

Wall Street-Backed Exchange Set to Launch as Rival to NYSE, Nasdaq [WSJ]Members Exchange, or MEMX, is expected to execute its first trades after it opens premarket trading at 7 am ET. Initially it will handle trades in seven stocks, including Alphabet Inc. and Exxon Mobil Corp. On Sept. 29, MEMX plans to extend trading to all U.S. exchange-listed securities….The New Jersey-based startup has raised more than $135 million from firms including Charles Schwab Corp., Citadel Securities, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Virtu Financial Inc…. The consortium behind MEMX came together after years of frustration among banks and trading firms with the fees charged by the major exchanges. Many Wall Street firms say the exchanges abuse their dominant position in the marketplace to overcharge for market data and other key services…. MEMX plans to undercut the big exchanges on price, initially giving away its data.

Back in October, the creators of Showtime’s “Billions” dodged a bullet: A federal judge watched their terrible show, and found no similarity between its character Wendy Rhoades and the real-life Denise Shull beyond their gender and jobs, neither of which are, apparently, copyrightable. But then, according to Shull, Andrew Ross Sorkin & co. got cocky and started having Maggie Siff, who plays the allegedly-not-fictitious-enough hedge fund performance coach and dominatrix, dress suspiciously like Shull, just to stick it to her, as Shull saw it.

“Lauren Bonner and Point72 have resolved the claims amicably prior to a decision being issued,” arbitrator Martin Scheinman said Thursday. Terms of the settlement couldn’t be learned….

Mr. Haynes, whom Ms. Bonner accused of writing a vulgarity hostile to women on a whiteboard, among other allegations, was cleared by the arbitrator of that specific allegation, said a person familiar with the arbitration.

The person added, however, that there were no findings by the arbitrator on other issues related to Mr. Haynes because the litigation was settled.

Trump to block U.S. downloads of TikTok, WeChat on Sunday [CNBC]The announcement comes ahead of an expected statement Friday by President Donald Trump on whether or not the government will approve a deal for Oracle to take a minority stake in TikTok and become a “trusted technology partner” for the company in the U.S…. “It’s not doing the same thing to TikTok as to WeChat,” Ross said in an interview on Fox Business Friday. ”...As to TikTok, it’s just upgrades, maintenance things like that, that would be shut down at this stage. The real shutdown would come after November 12 in the event that there is not another transaction. So it’s very different how the way the two are being handled.”

Deutsche Bank AG told U.S. employees they don’t have to return to the office until July 2021…. “Many of you do not wish to return to 60 Wall Street soon,” the memo said, a reference to the bank’s office in downtown Manhattan.

The people who run such companies have, to put it mildly, noticed. And they’ve been selling and selling as their potentially world-saving but also potential fruitless and thus shareholder-value-destroying efforts pump up their stock prices. Take, for instance, Vaxart, a company which may or may not have been a bit optimistic in public statements about its participation in U.S. government vaccine research and the billions of dollars it’s handing out. Well, Vaxart used to be owned by a hedge fund, a hedge fund which retains a small stake and a large pile of warrants and a couple of board seats. And, well, wouldn’t you know that just before Vaxart began—in a possibly exaggerated fashion—to publicize its participation in “Operation Warp Speed,” that hedge fund, Armistice Capital, took a quick break unloading its shares, and Vaxart took a moment away from trying to save the world to double the amount of its shares Armistice was allowed to own, in a way that just happened to earn...

For years, activist investors of the foreign variety were about as welcome in Japan as Commodore Perry’s gunboats a century and a half earlier. Indeed, any attempt from outside to change Japan’s rather sclerotic corporate culture was treated as a national security threat, as Chris Hohn will unhappily tell you.

Then, at last, an opening: Among the many reforms promised by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was that of corporate governance, the sort of thing that people like Paul Singer view as an open invitation. After all, in the wake of the whole ongoing SoftBank catastrophe, it was pretty much the least he could do.

“This very strong forward guidance, very powerful forward guidance that we have announced today will provide strong support for the economy,” Chairman Jerome Powell told reporters. To drive the point home, he used the word “powerful” 10 times in the press conference…. Mr. Powell insisted the Fed isn’t “out of ammo. We do have lots of tools. We’ve got the lending tools.” That’s putting a brave face on it. It has already exhausted its short-term interest-rate ammo and is buying more than $100 billion of debt per month. That leaves lending, but even that has come up short….

So despite the Fed’s “powerful” words and plentiful tools, Mr. Powell once again pleaded for Congress and the administration to pump more fiscal aid into the economy. The absence of fiscal support “will show up in things like evictions, and foreclosures, and…things that will scar and damage the economy.”

Trump Administration Pushes for U.S. Control of TikTok [WSJ]ByteDance Ltd., the Beijing-based company that owns TikTok, has sought to retain majority ownership for its proposed partnership with Oracle Corp…. That has raised concerns among Senate Republicans and others, who say the proposed technology partnership between ByteDance and Oracle falls short of the full U.S. acquisition sought by Mr. Trump, leaving worries about the Chinese government’s potential access to U.S. user data in the future.Asked about ByteDance maintaining a majority stake in TikTok, Mr. Trump said, “Conceptually, I can tell you, I don’t like that.”

It must, alas, be said that in the wake of Gross’ divorce from his wife of three decades and muse (and shockingly accomplished forger), these letters took a dark and disturbing turn. But they were only a foretaste of what was to come. For while clients and companies could prevent Gross from managing money, they could not keep him from sharing his thoughts. And so, seven months after being put out to pasture, Gross’ investment outlook returned, in exactly the form you’d expect from a 75-year-old: A PDF clearly typed in Microsoft Word, with a piece of clipart at the top. The first of these family holiday newsletter-style messages was straightforward—and familiar—enough, 500 words predicting doom thanks to the Fed. The second, back in July, assured us that Gross had avoided the ‘rona out on the links, and also that he’s doing pretty much what you’d expect in retirement, which is to say watching CNBC all the time.

Shares of Eastman Kodak Co. were up about 60% shortly after the start of trading in New York, following a legal review of how it award stock option grants to its chief executive officer before announcing a federal loan. The review determined the company had mishandled the process, but also that stock transactions by its chief executive officer and a board member didn’t constitute insider trading.

Work output was particularly affected on Mondays and Fridays, according to findings discussed by Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon in a private meeting with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods analysts…. “The WFH lifestyle seems to have impacted younger employees, and overall productivity and ‘creative combustion’ has taken a hit,” KBW’s Brian Kleinhanzl wrote in a Sept. 13 note to clients, citing an earlier meeting with Dimon.

Judy Shelton Lacks Confirmation Votes for Fed Board, Thune Says [Bloomberg]“We’re still working it,” said Thune of South Dakota. “It’s the Federal Reserve, it’s important so obviously we want to get it done. But we’re not going to bring it up until we have the votes to confirm her….” Two Republicans -- Mitt Romney of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine -- have said they won’t back her elevation to the Fed. Senator Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, “is still in the process of vetting her nomination,” spokeswoman Karina Borger said in an email. Tennessee Republican Lamar Alexander, who is not seeking re-election, hasn’t said how he would vote and spokesman William Heartsill declined to comment.

The expected rebuke from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve accelerated planning for Chief Executive Michael Corbat’s retirement, according to people familiar with the matter. Regulators didn’t ask Mr. Corbat to step down, the people said. Rather, he came to believe that an expensive, multiyear systems overhaul designed to address regulators’ concerns was best left in the hands of his successor, Jane Fraser, they said….

For years, regulators have privately pressed Citigroup and Mr. Corbat to fix the bank’s risk systems, according to people familiar with the matter. A public rebuke would significantly ratchet up the pressure…. Regulators have faulted Citi’s management for not giving priority to the risk-management overhaul, the people said…. “One thing has become very clear to me…we need to think about infrastructure and controls very differently,” Mr. Corbat wrote to staff in August. “We can’t think of them as just something that is...

“Whilst the primary responsibility for the prevention and detection of fraud is with the management and supervisory boards, audits should play more of a role in the future to detect material frauds,” Carmine Di Sibio, chairman and chief executive of EY Global, said in a letter sent out to clients and seen by The Wall Street Journal.

“Even though we were successful in uncovering the fraud, we regret that it was not uncovered sooner,” he said.

It’s one of the first things a person new to Bridgewater Associates learns, assuming they read the manual. Its right up near the top: Initiates are instructed to “recognize that effective, innovative thinkers are going to make mistakes” (Principle no. 9). They are not, however, to feel bad about those mistakes. They are to love them (no. 10) and reflect upon the pain they cause. (no. 17), because it is unacceptable not to learn from them (no. 8). Well, there sure is a hell of a lot to love, reflect upon and learn from right now.

“I think that a change in ownership at the Mets is an opportunity to make that franchise as strong as it can possibly be, and I think over the long haul it’ll be something that will be good for the game,” commissioner Rob Manfred said during an online event hosted by the Hofstra University’s business school.

Struggling Hotel Owners, Some With Trump Ties, Seek Federal Bailout [NYT]They are making the case that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has the power — and access to the billions of federal funds he needs — to extend existing coronavirus relief efforts to the commercial real estate sector, which so far has been cut off from most of the stimulus money.But Congress prevented Mr. Mnuchin from tapping the main pot of $454 billion in coronavirus relief funds on his own, and doubts exist in the Treasury Department about the economic case for propping up a relatively small slice of the market that would primarily benefit wealthy investors who knowingly made high-risk bets.

“Why is the environment for hedge funds getting harder?” the September 9 letter said. “Managers live inside the box defined by their risk constraint. They can do whatever they want, as long as they stay inside that box…If that box includes a need to ‘smooth the ride,’ then that box gets tighter and smaller every year. As the techniques we use to smooth the ride get discovered, they no longer smooth.”

The workflow involved in finding investment ideas is “joyful,” the firm went on. “The workflow involved in smoothing the ride is increasingly a soul-sapping one.”

Grammy award-winning rapper Clifford Harris, known as T.I., agreed to pay a U.S. regulator $75,000 to settle charges that he broke securities laws by selling fraudulent crypto-currency investments, the agency said on Friday…. FLiK tokens were sold as investment contracts in the company which claimed it would operate as a “Netflix on the blockchain,” a streaming platform where users could buy products and services with FLiK tokens. But Felton allegedly used the funds to buy a Ferrari, million-dollar home, diamond jewelry and other luxury goods, the SEC said.