Tag Archives: SPY
7 Stocks Billionaire Fund Managers Are Crazy About
Posted on 22. Mar, 2012 by Insider Monkey.
1. Apple (AAPL) is the most popular stock among billionaire fund managers. Nearly half of them had a large position in Apple at the end of December. Apple is also the most popular stock among “ordinary” millionaire hedge fund managers (see the 10 most popular stocks). The stock gained 45% this year as of March 16th. We have been extremely bullish about Apple since we started writing here at Trading Deck at the end of September. Apple was the most popular stock among hedge funds at the end of September as well. We have been telling you that technology stocks are extremely undervalued as a sector and Apple had single digit forward PE multiple at the time. Today we are still very optimistic about the stock. Its 2012 forward PE ratio is 13.5 which is still less than the market. This is a stock that is expected to increase its earnings by nearly 20% per year over the next 5 years. It should easily trade above $800 over the next couple of years. Ken Griffin had the largest position in Apple at the end of December.
2. Google (GOOG) is the second most popular stock among billionaire hedge fund managers. The stock had a disappointing performance so far in 2012, losing 3.2% as of March 16. We are optimistic about Google as well. The stock’s 2012 forward PE ratio is 17 which is more than 25% higher than that of Google’s. They have similar expected growth rates though. We think Google deserves a slight premium over Apple because it is less exposed to competition from other search engines. This is not a stock that will go up 50% this year but it should deliver healthy returns over the long run. Julian Robertson and his tiger cubs Stephen Mandel and Chase Coleman are the most bullish fund managers about Google. We should note that Chase Coleman has an excellent track record of picking winners in the internet space and he made more than $1 billion for his investors by betting on Facebook in its infancy (check out Chase Coleman’s other internet stocks).
3. El Paso Corp (EP) is the third most popular stock among billionaire hedge fund managers. Carl Icahn made a bundle in EP by investing more than a $1 billion before its merger with Kinder Morgan was announced. He had $1.9 billion invested in the stock at the end of December. The other fund managers were pursing El Paso as a merger arbitrage candidate. These stocks usually trade at a discount to their announced merger price because investors usually aren’t 100% certain that the merger will go through as planned. Billionaire hedge fund managers made 9.6% since the beginning of this year by correctly betting that El Paso – Kinder Morgan deal will go through.
4. News Corp (NWSA) is the fourth popular stock among billionaire hedge fund managers. When other investors were dumping News Corp shares because of the hacking scandal billionaire hedge fund managers were buying them. The stock recovered all of its loses last summer. It is also slightly outperforming the market this year. Paul Singer had the largest position in NWSA among the billionaires we are tracking.
5. Medco Health Solutions (MHS) is the fifth popular stock. This is also a merger arbitrage play. The stock returned 25.7% this year as of March 16. D. E. Shaw had more than $300 million invested in the stock.
6. Microsoft (MSFT) is the sixth most popular stock among billionaire hedge fund managers. Ken Fisher and David Einhorn had the largest stakes in the stock. Last May at the Ira Sohn Conference David Einhorn called for the resignation of Steve Ballmer and stated that Microsoft is significantly undervalued. The stock gained 38% since then (read the transcript of Einhorn’s presentation).
7. Wells Fargo (WFC) is the seventh most popular stock among billionaire fund managers. The stock’s 2012 gains are around 23.4%, ten percentage points more than the S&P 500 index. Warren Buffett has the largest stake in this banking giant at the end of December. There were 9 other billionaire fund managers with Wells Fargo positions.
Insider Monkey has 30 stocks in its Billionaire Hedge Fund Manager Index and these 30 stocks (see the entire list here) had an average return of more than 16% this year as of March 16. The top 7 stocks that we discussed above performed even better. Five of these seven stocks outperformed the market and they had an average return of 19.9%, vs. 12.3% for the SPY. It is too early to turn this into a trading strategy, but tracking this index is going to be more fun than tracking billionaires’ wealth every 15 minutes.
China’s High-Tech Spy Network: Just Had An IPO?
Posted on 12. Mar, 2012 by Wilensky.
In the high-tech world of espionage, deep pockets prevail. Not this time though, as Chinese spies have mined substantial amounts of data.. through Facebook. Proving that the social data mining machine is a double-edged sword, the spies gathered email addresses, phone numbers, names, and details on family members on a number of high-ranking military officials. The fake account of United States Navy admiral James Stavridis befriended a number of other officials for an undisclosed amount of time before the intrusion was identified. Considering the number of ‘spoof’ accounts of a number of famous celebrities and the sensitivity of these high-ranking officials positions, it’s disconcerting such a simple and well-known technique was so successful.
Chinese Spies Use Fake Facebook Pages to Gain Intel | Defense Tech.
Index Funds, Where Are We Now?
Posted on 11. Jan, 2012 by Wilensky.
Index Funds, Where Are We Now?
While following important economic news as it continually streams through headlines, its akin to wrapping your mouth around a fire hose to quench your thirst; however it’s essential to consider how these developments are affecting your investments. Take a look at how a couple of major indexes and index funds have performed since the beginning of the year…
PowerShares DB US Dollar Index Bullish (NYSE:UUP) -1.53%
U.S. Equity:
SPDRS S&P 500 Index (NYSE:SPY) -1.22%
Technology:
PowerShares QQQ (Nasdaq:QQQ) 0.94%
Europe, Australia-Asia iShares MSCI EAFE Index (NYSE:EFA) -15.77%
Energy:
United States Oil (NYSE:USO) -1.82%
Precious Metals:
iShares Comex Gold Trust (NYSE:IAU) +9.57%
Fixed Income:
iShares Barclays 7-10 Year Treasury (NYSE:IEF) +12.70%
The Market:
The S&P 500 index, as tracked by the SPDRS S&P 500 Index fund, has fluctuated over the year; however, this fund did start to rise in recent months as investors moved in. From the beginning of the year to now, the S&P 500 (as well as the DJIA) has at times seen gains of close to 10%. However, for 2011 the performance has just below zero. (For a complete guide, check out our Index Investing Tutorial.)
Pullbacks and Producers
Gold futures prices, followed by the iShares Comex Gold Trust fund, have continued to trade at record highs. IAU has recently settled at $15.70.
Technology is currently flat compared to the beginning of the year as top PowerShares QQQQ fund holdings like Apple (Nasdaq:AAPL), Qualcomm (Nasdaq:QCOM) and Google (Nasdaq:GOOG) are all flat as well.
Sign of a top? GLD Moves Into Top Spot, Surpasses SPY As Biggest ETF – Focus on Funds
Posted on 23. Aug, 2011 by Harvey Sax.
GLD Moves Into Top Spot, Surpasses SPY As Biggest ETF
Is $5,000/Ounce The New Target In Gold’s Run?MKM: Buy Silver ETF (14% Upside); Pair Utilities With October Calls
By Murray Coleman
Here’s another rather stark sign of our times:
– The SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) on Friday moved past the grand-daddy of all ETFs, the SPDR S&P 500 (SPY), as the leader in overall assets.
According to data provided by State Street’s (STT) Global Advisors ETF unit today, here’s a breakdown of assets as of Friday’s close:
GLD: $76.67 billion
SPY: $74.38 billion
But something to keep in mind about these very fluid numbers:
SPY over the past several months has been averaging more than 200 million shares traded a day.
GLD’s average volume is slightly more than 18.3 million a day.
Also, SPY entered today’s session with a return of -9.6% on the year. Meanwhile, GLD’s net asset value was ahead by nearly 31% so far in 2011.
On Monday, SPY had most recently gained 0.5%. The gold ETF was up 2.3% on the day.
via GLD Moves Into Top Spot, Surpasses SPY As Biggest ETF – Focus on Funds – Barrons.com.
Chart of the day: Rolling 3-Month Correlation Between Oil & S&P500
Posted on 31. Mar, 2011 by David Spinowitz.
Over the past few years the correlation between oil (especialy WTI Crude Oil) and the S&P500 has been remarkably consistent with an average of about 0.75 (scale from -1 to 1). However, over the past month that strong correlation that traders had become acustomed to has diminished at an exponential rate. Over this past month, the rolling 3 month correlation (rolling windows give a much more accurate measure) has fallen to its lowest level since the early 2000s (less than 0.20). Basically, the Energy sector and oil have been moving less in tandem with each other on a day to day basis than they have in years.
Source: Bespoke Investment Group
Morgan Stanley’s Focus Growth Fund: A Brief Analysis
Posted on 25. Mar, 2011 by Osman Gulseven.
by: Dr. Osman Gulseven
In a recent article, I discussed the top holdings in Morgan Stanley’s portfolio. According the latest 13F filings, Morgan Stanley’s (MS) year-to-date performance was mediocre and below the S&P 500 (SPY) return.
The investment banks mutual funds have been lagging behind the market since the last decade. The mediocre performance of investment banks portfolio shows that they take hard-earned money and invest in under-performing assets. They also charge management fees and hidden costs such as front-end/back-end loads, plus commissions you never heard of. Some companies charge up to 3% in management expenses. I was checking which funds Morgan Stanley offers and whether there is any fund that is worth to pay for. It was a long search, but I finally noticed one: Morgan Stanley Focus Growth Fund. Managed by Dennis Lynch, the fund was able to offer outperforming returns to the holders. The fund’s average annual expense is 1.77 with a turnover rate of 40% in the last year.
According to the latest N-CSR file submitted to I-Metrix Edgar-Online, focus growth fund has outperformed the SPY with a large margin of 50% in 2009. 2010 return was 25%, still beating SPY by 10% point and Russell Growth 1000 (IWF) index by 9% point. The fund has a diversified portfolio with 97% invested in common equities. There is a little bit more weight towards Internet companies. Here, are the top holdings and their year-to-date performance: continue reading here at Seeking Alpha
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