Artisan Partners, a high value-added investment management firm, published its ‘Artisan Mid Cap Fund’ first quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of -2.36% was recorded by its Investor Class: ARTMX, -2.32% by its Advisor Class: APDMX, and -2.30% by its Institutional Class: APHMX, in the fourth quarter of 2020, all below the Russell Midcap® Growth Index that delivered a -0.57% return and the Russell Midcap® Index that was up by 8.14% for the same period. You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.
Artisan Mid Cap Fund, in its Q1 2021 investor letter, mentioned Nasdaq, Inc. (NASDAQ: NDAQ), and shared their insights on the company. Nasdaq, Inc. is a New York, New York-based financial services company that currently has a $26.8 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, NDAQ delivered a 23.23% return, extending its 12-month gains to 52.41%. As of May 06, 2021, the stock closed at $163.58 per share.
Here is what Artisan Mid Cap Fund has to say about Nasdaq, Inc. in its Q1 2021 investor letter:
“We started new investment campaigns in Nasdaq. Nasdaq is the second-largest diversified global exchange and a technology provider for US and European capital markets. While the company is well-known for its US stock exchange, the current management team is transitioning Nasdaq away from this more mature and volatile business and toward faster-growing software and information service models. Most recently, the company’s acquisition of Verafin makes it a leader in software to help financial institutions detect financial crime (fraud, money laundering, etc.)—an increasingly critical regulatory challenge for customers. Over time, we think management can achieve its target of 70%-80% recurring revenues while increasing its revenue growth rate and margin profile.”
Our calculations show that Nasdaq, Inc. (NASDAQ: NDAQ) does not belong in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As of the end of the fourth quarter of 2020, Nasdaq, Inc. was in 27 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 32 funds in the third quarter. NDAQ delivered a 13.94% return in the past 3 months.
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.
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