Baron Funds, an asset management firm, published its “Baron FinTech Fund” first quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of 1.29% was delivered by the fund’s institutional shares for the Q1 of 2021, trailing the S&P 500 Index, which appreciated 6.17%, and modestly underperforming the FactSet Global FinTech Index which rose 2.77% for the same period. You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.
Baron FinTech Fund, in its Q1 2021 investor letter, mentioned BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE: BLK), and shared their insights on the company. BlackRock, Inc. is a New York, New York-based investment management company that currently has a $130.6 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, BLK delivered an 18.76% return, extending its 12-month gains to 66.79%. As of May 14, 2021, the stock closed at $856.87 per share.
Here is what Baron FinTech Fund has to say about BlackRock, Inc. in its Q1 2021 investor letter:
“During the quarter, we initiated a position in BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest investment manager with $9 trillion in assets under management. BlackRock offers an array of products across equities, fixed income, alternatives, and cash management to institutional and retail investors worldwide. About one-quarter of BlackRock’s assets under management is actively managed, and the rest is in passive index funds and iShares-branded ETFs. The company offers technology services including the investment and risk management platform, Aladdin, as well as other advisory services and solutions. Over the five years ending December 31, 2020, assets under management and earnings per share grew at compound annual growth rates
of 13% and 12%, respectively.We believe BlackRock is well positioned for continued growth given its diverse product offering, global distribution, brand recognition, and capable management team. With most of its assets in index funds and ETFs, BlackRock is a prime beneficiary of the ongoing shift to passive investing. The company also benefits from increasing demand for sustainable investment strategies and “barbell” strategies that use a combination of low-cost index funds, active and illiquid alternatives products. BlackRock fits squarely within our Tech-Enabled Financials theme given its longstanding commitment to innovation and proprietary technology platform, Aladdin, which serves as the investment and risk management system for both BlackRock and a growing number of institutional investors around the world. We expect BlackRock’s earnings per share will continue to grow at a doubledigit annual rate over a market cycle through a combination of mid-single-digit growth in assets under management from net inflows, market appreciation, low to mid-teens revenue growth in technology services, modest margin expansion, and share repurchases.”
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Our calculations show that BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE: BLK) 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, BlackRock, Inc. was in 53 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 39 funds in the third quarter. BLK delivered an 18.52% 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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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
