Bill Miller was on top of the investment world just 5 years ago. Since then his $3.85 Billion Legg Mason Capital Management Value (LMVTX) mutual fund lost nearly 40%, whereas the SPY had a slightly positive return. Insider Monkey, your source for free insider trading data, doesn’t need to run regressions to know Bill Miller damaged his pristine reputation with this disastrous performance.
Despite his poor performance, investors still gave him billions of dollars in hopes he might get his groove back. Bill Miller’s top 25 holdings at the end of 2009 returned 16.1% until last Friday. This might seem satisfactory to most investors, but a low cost index fund such as SPY returned 22.6% during the same time period.
Bill Miller couldn’t beat the market in 2010, but his performance so far in 2011 reminds us of his old glory days. Bill Miller’s top 25 stock holdings at the end of December returned 10.2% in 2011, vs. SPY’s 7%. Here is how each stock performed:
| Company | Ticker | Return | Value (Million) |
| AES CORP | AES | 5.7% | 577 |
| TEXAS INSTRS INC | TXN | 11.9% | 403 |
| CISCO SYS INC | CSCO | -6.8% | 363 |
| WELLS FARGO & CO NEW | WFC | 5.5% | 361 |
| QUALCOMM INC | QCOM | 19.6% | 354 |
| MICROSOFT CORP | MSFT | -2.5% | 332 |
| E M C CORP MASS | EMC | 18.7% | 323 |
| AMERICAN EXPRESS CO | AXP | 6.5% | 288 |
| INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHS | IBM | 12.8% | 283 |
| AMAZON COM INC | AMZN | 3.6% | 269 |
| EBAY INC | EBAY | 24.1% | 259 |
| GENERAL ELECTRIC CO | GE | 17.2% | 259 |
| CITIGROUP INC | C | 3.8% | 252 |
| TIME WARNER INC | TWX | 18.7% | 247 |
| JPMORGAN CHASE & CO | JPM | 13.3% | 245 |
| UNITED CONTL HLDGS INC | UAL | 13.0% | 238 |
| MEDTRONIC INC | MDT | 11.9% | 238 |
| HEWLETT PACKARD CO | HPQ | 15.6% | 237 |
| CONOCOPHILLIPS | COP | 13.5% | 231 |
| AFLAC INC | AFL | 5.3% | 229 |
| PEPSICO INC | PEP | -2.9% | 226 |
| NYSE EURONEXT | NYX | 26.1% | 224 |
| BANK OF AMERICA CORPORATION | BAC | 10.6% | 215 |
| GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP INC | GS | -0.1% | 207 |
| CAPITAL ONE FINL CORP | COF | 23.9% | 200 |
Bill Miller is invested in some hedge fund favorites such as Citigroup, Microsoft, JP Morgan, and Hewlett-Packard. William Ackman’s Pershing Square, David Tepper’s Appaloosa, Daniel Loeb’s Third Point, Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global, Richard Perry’s Perry Capital, Joseph DiMenna’s Zweig-DiMenna, Leon Cooperman’s Omega Advisors, and John Paulson’s Paulson & Co are among the hedge funds with large Citigroup investments. Lee Ainslie’s Maverick Capital, and Jim Simons’ Renaissance have HPQ in their portfolios. David Einhorn’s Greenlight, Tom Steyer’s Farallon, Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates, Whitney Tilson’s T2 Partners, and Barry Rosenstein’s Jana Partners have large Microsoft holdings.
