Moore Global Investments, led by billionaire Louis Bacon, has revealed its equity portfolio as of the end of the first quarter of 2015 in a 13F filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The New York-based fund was founded in 1989 by Mr. Bacon, one of the most famous traders of the past two decades, whose personal wealth is estimated to be over $1.5 billion. Moore Global’s 13F portfolio contains a total of 407 positions valued at $4.56 billion. The fund’s top picks for the quarter include Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA), Baidu Inc (ADR)(NASDAQ:BIDU), JD.Com Inc(ADR)(NASDAQ:JD), and Capital One Financial Corp. (NYSE:COF).
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Moving back to Bacon’s latest 13F, we will first discuss his top holding Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA), in which he boosted his position to 2.13 million shares from just 138,345 shares held previously. The stake was valued at $176.91 million as of the reporting period. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA)’s stock performance hasn’t been very impressive this year, as it’s trading down by 17.63% year-to-date, and down by 6.6% since its IPO. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA) is now focusing on investing heavily in its global growth. Daniel Zhang, the newly-appointed CEO of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA), plans to invest in the global market and extend the company’s reach beyond China’s border. As part of its strategy to explore the international market, Alibaba has already announced plans to set up a cloud computing operation in Dubai, as well as boosting its stake in the online retailer Zulily in the United States. Other investors with big positions in Alibaba include Rob Citrone’s Discovery Capital Management and Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global.
In Baidu Inc (ADR)(NASDAQ:BIDU), Moore Global cut its position by about 30% during the first quarter. In its 13F, the firm disclosed owning 319,689 Baidu shares, with a reported value of $66.62 million. That was a decrease from the end of 2014, when Moore Global held 456,185 shares of the company. With a market cap of $67.8 million, Baidu is a popular search engine in China, whose stock has appreciated by nearly 24% since May 2014. Baidu can be termed as China’s Google, as it holds a majority of the search engine market in China, just as Google holds a majority of the search engine market throughout the rest of the world. Baidu posted a 34.0% increase in first quarter 2015 revenues to $2.1 billion, compared to the same period last year. Net income was $395.1 million, representing a 3.4% decrease from the same quarter a year ago. The largest shareholder of Baidu among the funds we track is Stephen Mandel’s Lone Pine Capital, which held 5.28 million shares at the end of the first quarter.
