Baron Opportunity Fund recently published its second-quarter commentary – a copy of which can be downloaded here. During the second quarter of 2021, the Baron Opportunity Fund returned 10.14% (institutional shares). In comparison, the benchmark S&P 500 Index was up 8.55%, while the Russell 3000 Growth Index was up 11.38%. You should check out Baron’s top 5 stock picks for investors to buy right now, which could be the biggest winners of 2021.
In the Q2 2021 Investor Letter, the fund highlighted a few stocks and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) is one of them. Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) is a technology company. In the last three months, Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) stock gained 20%. Here is what the fund said:
“Shares of Microsoft Corporation, a cloud-software leader and provider of software productivity tools and infrastructure, rose during the quarter following a strong earnings report highlighting solid demand for its broad product stack and continued momentum migrating its business to the cloud. Microsoft was a top contributor in the period because it trades at reasonable free cash flow and earnings valuations, has cloud and digital transformation tailwinds at its back, reported a solid March quarter, and beat Street expectations by a wide margin. Microsoft’s results continued to be strong across the board, with Azure cloud computing revenues up 46% in constantcurrency (“cc”) terms and commercial cloud bookings growth of 38% cc, the best in years. Microsoft also reported robust profitability growth, with operating income expanding 31% and GAAP earnings up 45%. We believe the company is well positioned for continued solid growth and profitability through market share gains as more companies look to transform and digitize their businesses as they move operations to the cloud.”
Pixabay/Public Domain
Earlier this month, we published an article revealing that Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) was one of the 12 stocks Stanley Druckenmiller is selling.
In Q1 2021, the number of bullish hedge fund positions on Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) stock decreased by about 3% from the previous quarter (see the chart here), so a number of other hedge fund managers don’t believe in MSFT’s growth potential. Our calculations showed that Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) is ranked #3 among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds.
The top 10 stocks among hedge funds returned 231.2% between 2015 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 Index ETFs by more than 126 percentage points. We know it sounds unbelievable. You have been dismissing our articles about top hedge fund stocks mostly because you were fed biased information by other media outlets about hedge funds’ poor performance. You could have doubled the size of your nest egg by investing in the top hedge fund stocks instead of dumb S&P 500 ETFs. Here you can watch our video about the top 5 hedge fund stocks right now. All of these stocks had positive returns in 2020.
At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost real estate prices. So, we recommended this real estate stock to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 10 best EV stocks to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our homepage.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
