Everybody is talking about Bill Ackman’s nearly $2 billion losses in Valeant (VRX). Valeant isn’t the only stock that is costing hedge funds billions. Actually we identified 25 stocks that collectively costed hedge funds a total of $52 billion since the end of June. You can check out the list of these stocks by clicking this link. We identified 125 hedge funds and prominent investors who were among the top 5 holders of these stocks in our database. Since these stocks were among the worst performing stocks recently, some of the hedge funds with large exposures to these stocks will probably report discouraging results over the next few weeks. Media already pounced on Bill Ackman and David Einhorn. Our calculations show that they only owned 2 of the 25 worst performing stocks for hedge funds. One billionaire hedge fund manager had large positions in 9 of these 25 stocks and we are the first financial news site breaking this story. Even Warren Buffett had 3 of these 25 stocks in his portfolio, so Ackman isn’t doing as bad as you think.
Let’s share opinion on the terrible short-term performance of these stocks and hedge funds. These results are absolutely expected. When you cherry pick your stocks, you can always come up with a list of stocks that underperform or outperform by a large margin. Hedge funds follow a certain investment style and sometimes their style falls out of favor and they underperform. Stock picking means you are taking certain risks. Risk taking occasionally leads to large losses. The mysterious hedge fund manager who had large positions in 9 out of the 25 worst performing stocks for hedge funds delivered net annualized returns of 17% through the end of 2014. He outperformed the S&P 500 Index by more than 10 percentage points annually. Anyone can beat the market by a large margin or underperform it by a large margin in the short-term. We are more interested in superior average returns over the long-term. That’s why we don’t think these losses aren’t a big deal, other than the fact that it will cost these hedge funds a total of more than $10 billion in lost incentive fees.
We’d like to remind our readers that you can create a free account on our site and get free email alerts whenever we publish an article about one of the hedge fund managers you like or one of the stocks you track. This service is free, so don’t hesitate to sign up. Here is our countdown:
28. Dan Loeb – Third Point: Top 5 positions in AGN and SUNE. Check out his portfolio by clicking the link.
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27. Jeffrey Tannenbaum – Fir Tree: Top 5 positions in MYL and SUNE. You can check out his portfolio and portfolio history by clicking the link.
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26. Keith Meister – Corvex Capital: Top 5 positions in WMB and PAH.
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25. John Griffin – Blue Ridge Capital: Top 5 positions in ENDP and PAH. You can check out this billionaire’s stock picks and history by clicking the link too (we won’t repeat this again).
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24. Bill Ackman – Pershing Square: Top 5 positions in VRX and PAH.
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23. William Gray – Orbis Investment Management: Top 5 positions in BIDU and LBTYK.
Follow William B. Gray's Orbis Investment Management
22. Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson – Adage Capital: Top 5 positions in BIIB and IBM.
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21. First Eagle: Top 5 positions in LBTYK and TWX
