Kelly Bit

By Kelly Bit (Bloomberg) -- The world’s largest hedge fund manager is banking on machines. Ray Dalio’s $165 billion Bridgewater Associates will start a new, artificial-intelligence unit next month with about half a dozen people, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The team will report to David Ferrucci, who joined Bridgewater at the end of 2012 after leading the International Business Machines Corp.

By Katherine Burton, Kelly Bit and Simone Foxman (Bloomberg) -- Hedge fund manager Zach Schreiber stood on stage at Avery Fisher Hall in New York eight months ago and made a bold prediction. “We believe crude oil is going lower -- much lower,” Schreiber, 42, told the audience of roughly 3,000 investors, including some of the biggest money managers in the industry. “If you are long, I’m sorry for you.” Then he showed a slide of a car stuffed with clowns.

NEW YORK Bank of America cut ties with about 150 hedge funds last year in its prime brokerage group because new regulatory requirements designed to make the financial system safer are forcing lenders to reduce costs. The second-largest U.S. bank made the decisions based on which client relationships were profitable enough to keep amid new capital and liquidity rules, according to two people familiar with the bank’s strategy, who asked not to be named because details are private.