Abrams Bison Investments is a hedge fund founded back in 2000 by its current portfolio manager, Gavin M. Abrams, a value investor with a long-term focus. Mr. Abrams graduated cum laude from Harvard University back in 1994 with a BA in Economics. He gained work experience and knowledge as a research analyst at ESL Investment, where he worked prior to founding Abrams Bison Investments. His fund has been registered as an investment adviser with the Securities and Exchange Commission since January 2006.
Abrams Bison Investments’ primary focus is on long-term equity and risk arbitrage investments. It looks for businesses which Mr. Abrams suspects are currently trading for well below their actual value. The fund is mainly focused on investing in U.S companies. According to the most recent data available, the fund’s 13F portfolio is valued at $728 million, while its plain brochure published in March 2017 revealed that it had total assets under management of $2.8 billion at that time. We recently covered the fund’s returns in its earlier years in Abrams Bison Investments Investor Letters. Those were very productive years for the fund, as it significantly outperformed the market in 2009.
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According to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission for the second quarter of 2018, Abrams Bison Investments made only one small change to its portfolio, boosting its stake in UnitedHealth Group Inc. (UNH) by 3.98%, adding 32,000 shares to its position in the company. That lifted its holding to 837,000 shares valued at $205.35 million on June 30. The fund’s largest stake was still in Credit Acceptance Corp. (CACC), consisting of 930,000 shares worth around $328.7 million. Abrams Bison Investments’ portfolio currently counts only three other stakes, those being Carvana Co. (CVNA), RenaissanceRe Holdings Ltd. (RNR), and Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (IBKR).
Insider Monkey’s flagship strategy identifies the best performing 100 hedge funds in our database at the end of each quarter and invests in their consensus stock picks. This way it is always invested in the best ideas of the best performing hedge funds and is able to generate much higher returns than the market. Since its inception in May 2014, our flagship strategy generated a cumulative return of 121% vs. a cumulative gain of 66.6% for the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) (see the details here).
Now let’s see how many investors from Insider Monkey’s database were interested in some of Abram Bisons’ stock picks. Starting with the health sector and its largest investment, UnitedHealth Group Inc. (UNH), 68 hedge funds out of 645 that we track had long positions in it at the end of June, collectively owning 2.80% of the company’s outstanding shares. There was a small increase in ownership of this company among hedge funds, as at the end of March there were 67 investors from Insider Monkey’s system with positions in UnitedHealth Group Inc. (UNH).
Out of the five Abram Bisons’ stock picks, the one that gained the most popularity among the investors that we follow during Q2 was Carvana Co. (CVNA). At the end of the second quarter there were 27 funds bullish on this stock, a jump from just 15 at the end of the first quarter. Collectively, those 27 funds owned 8.80% of the company’s outstanding shares at the end of June.
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