Beech Hill Advisors, led by Paul Cantor, Joseph Weiss and Will Wurm, has recently filed its 13F with the SEC, disclosing its long positions in U.S-traded equities as of June 30. According to the filing, the fund manages a public equity portfolio valued at $194.51 million, an 8.6% increase from three months earlier. During the period from April to June, Beech Hill Advisors increased its exposure towards the information technology sector to 24%, elevating the sector to being the one most represented in its portfolio. Following tech stocks are finance stocks, which comprise 19% of the firm’s equity portfolio. Coming back to the firm, the mother company of Beech Hill Advisors, called Beech Hill Partners, traces its origins back to 1932 when a former partner’s family established a retail brokerage house. In 1970, Paul Cantor joined that firm and has since served as the managing partner and president of the firm, together with its successor organizations. In this article, we are going to review the top tech picks of the veteran financial institution, which are represented by several “classic” technology stocks of the day: Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL), Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL).
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We pay attention to hedge funds’ moves because our research has shown that hedge funds are extremely talented at picking stocks on the long side of their portfolios. It is true that hedge fund investors have been underperforming the market in recent years. However, this was mainly because hedge funds’ short stock picks lost a ton of money during the bull market that started in March 2009. Hedge fund investors also paid an arm and a leg for the services that they received. We have been tracking the performance of hedge funds’ 15 most popular stock picks in real time since the end of August 2012. These stocks have returned 123.1% since then and outperformed the S&P 500 Index by around 65 percentage points (see more details here). That’s why we believe it is important to pay attention to hedge fund sentiment; we also don’t like paying huge fees.
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Following a 9.45% cut to its ownership of Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL), Beech Hill Advisors held 92,840 shares of the tech giant, valued at $11.64 million, its most-valuable position. Starting from the middle of July when the company announced its fiscal third quarter earnings, the stock’s share price has plummeted by 13%. Even though the EPS of $1.85, total sales of some $50 billion, and 39.7% gross margins all came in above analysts’ estimates, there are numerous fundamental problems hiding behind the numbers that appear to now be weighing down the stock. In particular, Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) reported iPhone unit sales of 47.4 million, which were well below estimates. Another concern that seems to be afflicting the stock is the weakness in China’s overall economy, as the country accounts for a growing share of Apple’s sales. The problems in the region may become even harsher after the unexpected devaluation of the country’s currency, the yuan, which took place earlier this week. Among the other funds that we follow, Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management reported having some 11.01 million shares of Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) worth $1.38 billion as of June 30, increasing his position by 1% in the second quarter.
The next tech stock in the portfolio of Beech Hill Advisors is an $8.72 million stake in the equity of the most popular social network in the world – Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB). Over the second quarter of 2015, the investment firm cut its holdings in the stock by 6.58%, finishing the first half of the year with 101,646 shares. The equity price of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) has not disappointed investors this year, gaining 20.73%. The surge can partially be attributed to the company’s latest earnings report in which it posted earnings of $0.50 per share, exceeding the estimates by $0.03, while its revenue of $4.04 billion also beat the expectations by $50 million. Columbus Circle Investors, headed by Donald Chiboucis, held some 3.19 million shares of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) with a market value of $273.63 million as of June 30.
Lastly, we have come to one of the major stories of many articles and much debate over the last few days. Some of you already call it Alphabet Inc, but for many the company will continue to be known as Google, as it was for the past 18 years. Anyway, over the second quarter Paul Cantor and his colleagues reduced their ownership in Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s Class A shares by 3.37% to 11,597 shares valued at $6.26 million. Larry Page, who founded Google together with Sergey Brin, shared in his blog that the company’s reorganization into a holding company called Alphabet is a potential cure to becoming too comfortable. Of course, when you are leading a multibillion dollar company, you have to set aside your own interests and passion and think about the destinies of those whose lives are now affected by your decisions. Apparently, Brin and Page didn’t want to put up with that and instead left the core business of Google to be ruled by the talented Sundar Pichai, simultaneously creating for themselves a huge playground for future discoveries. Investors reacted positively to the news, as shares shot up by 5.6% within hours of the announcement. After the first six months of the year, Fisher Asset Management held 822,275 Class A shares of Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) worth $456.12 million.
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