10 Largest Hedge Funds in The World And Their Favorite Stock Picks

9. Viking Global Investors (AUM: $33 billion) is a long/short global equity fund with a bottom-up stock picking approach and ranks number 9 amongst the top ten largest hedge funds globally. The fund which was started by three former Tiger colleagues is now down to one Andreas Halvorsen. This Connecticut based large hedge fund has $33 billion in assets under management now. Viking Global returned 16.3% annually since 1999. However, we said earlier, it was more successful in its early years. It returned 84.3% in 2000 and 35% in 2001. S&P 500 Index lost 9.1% in 2000 and 11.9% in 2001.

More recently Viking Global managed to deliver an annualized return of 12.9% over the last 10 years, vs. 7.2% gain for the S&P 500 Index. You should keep in mind that Viking Global is a long/short fund with much smaller risk and volatility than the S&P 500 Index which is 100% long. Long/short funds perform much better in down markets. Most investors fail to understand this. For example, S&P 500 Index lost 37% in 2008 whereas Viking Global lost only 0.9%.

Currently the fund is positively inclined towards the technology sector and has all four constituents of the “FANG” group in its portfolio. Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) was Viking Global Investors’ biggest position constituting more than 10% of its 13F portfolio. It sold off its entire position in the trouble-making stock Valeant Pharmaceuticals during the first quarter of this year.