Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (BABA), Facebook Inc (FB), Cheniere Energy, Inc. (LNG): Billionaire John Griffin’s Top Picks and New Positions

Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) is an actual new position for Griffin, as he purchased 3.24 milion shares of the social media giant last quarter. While other investors like David Tepper are fleeing the stock (and in his case, many prominent U.S stocks), there is a lot of potential upside in Facebook despite its stall for the past few months.

In addition to the potential for monetization of assets like Instagram and WhatsApp, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) is also working on a number of new technologies that could increase revenue in various ways, such as its patented Influencer technology, which roots out influential members of a group whose shares are more valuable, and thus, could fetch higher ad prices from advertisers who want their content to get shared and go viral.

Cheniere Energy, Inc. (NYSEAMEX:LNG) is a stock several of our funds were extremely bullish on last quarter, and they seem to have been on to something, as the natural gas and oil exploration company is up 8.08% year-to-date, and 73.92% since the beginning of 2014, despite oil’s slump. Seth Klarman’s Baupost Group and Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global were two other funds that were very bullish on Cheniere last quarter.

Lastly is Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA), a position Griffin increased by 17% last quarter, adding 265,000 shares to his previous amount of 1.50 million. Alibaba was amongst the ten most people stocks owned by hedge funds at the end of the third quarter, and enjoyed a strong fourth quarter coming off its record IPO in September, gaining 19.38% to close out 2014.

However 2015 has been the complete opposite story, with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA) down 16.44% year-to-date, primarily due to weaker than expected results at the end of January. Alibaba is also rumored to be embroiled in a battle with the Chinese government over counterfeit goods for sale on its website. Some of those accusations have led to the SEC launching an investigation into Alibaba, as to whether the company hid details about its operations from investors leading up to its IPO, which is likely to determine they did, given the details of the Chinese report. Stay tuned.

Disclosure: None