Adage Capital Management’s Latest Portfolio Moves

Adage Capital Management is a Boston-based hedge fund, launched by Phil Gross and Robert Atchinson back in 2001. Both Phil Gross and  Robert Atchinson previously worked at Harvard University’s endowment, and their team managed to beat the S&P 500 Index by an average of 4.5 percentage points annually. Considering this success, it comes as no surprise that Harvard Management Company hired Adage Capital Management to manage $1.8 billion and that it also holds a minority interest in the fund. At the end of 2016, Adage Capital Management held $27.71 billion in assets under management. What differentiates Adage Capital Management from other hedge fund is its radical idea to provide a guarantee for its performance in a way that it returns money back if it fails to perform well. At least, this is what it has been doing four years ago, and we weren’t able to attain information if they have continued with this trend to date. In this article we are going to take a look at the fund’s most interesting and latest investment moves.

Phillip Gross of Adage Capital

Insider Monkey’s flagship strategy identifies the best performing 100 hedge funds 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 89%, beating the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 29 percentage points (see the details here). We take a closer look at hedge funds like Adage Capital Management in order to identify their best and worst ideas.

During the first quarter of 2019, the fund initiated more than 60 new positions, among which the biggest  ones were in Spark Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:ONCE), SunTrust Banks, Inc. (NYSE:STI), and CBS Corporation (NYSE:CBS). It also showed enthusiasm some of its existing holdings, boosting its stakes in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Celgene Corporation (NASDAQ:CELG), and Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB).

On the other side of the enthusiasm spectrum were Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), and Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ), in which the fund trimmed its stakes. As for the top exits in the quarter we have General Electric Company (NYSE:GE), Berry Global Group, Inc. (NYSE:BERY), and 3M Company (NYSE:MMM).

Disclosure: None.

This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.