Dan Loeb’s Winning and Losing Trades, Top Stock Picks

Dan Loeb’s Third Point Offshore lost 0.4% in May, gaining 9.7% during the first five months of 2011. This is two percentage points better than S&P 500’s performance despite the fact that Loeb is only 43% net long in US equities. Third Point had $7.3 Billion AUM as of May 31st. Third Point Offshore returned 18.8% annually since its inception in 1996. S&P 500 returned 5.9% since then.

In May, the top winners in Loeb’s portfolio are:

Delphi Corp
El Paso (EP): (Jana Partners has the largest position in EP)
Short A
Aveta Inc
Short B

In May, Third Point’s top losers are:
NXP Semiconductor (NXPI)
NewPage Corp
Williams Cos (WMB): (Kensico Capital has the largest position in WMB)
Big Lots Inc (BIG): (York Capital has the largest position in BIG)
Gold

Loeb’s top positions are as follows:
Gold
Delphi Corp
El Paso (EP)
Technicolor
CVR Energy (CVI): (Third Point has the largest position in CVR Energy, followed by Eric Mindich’s Eton Park)

Loeb doesn’t have a concentrated portfolio. His top 20 long positions are 42% of his portfolio and his top 20 short positions are only 16% of his portfolio. The average size of his short positions is less than half of the average size of long positions. He must have equal number of long and short positions in his portfolio.

Previously we explained why Dan Loeb is invested in  El Paso (EP) and Williams Cos (WMB).

If investors had imitated Loeb’s long positions on May 16th when Loeb filed his 13F form with the SEC, they would have returned nearly 5 percent between then and the end of May. The S&P 500 index returned 1.2% during the same time period.