Ray Dalio‘s Bridgewater Associates is the largest hedge fund in the world, with assets under management of around $120 billion. Performance has been good since inception, with the fund consistently beating the S&P 500. Given Bridgewater’s excellent historical performance, let’s take a closer look at Bridgewater’s recently filed 13F and its top tech picks as of the end of September, which include Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Symantec Corporation (NASDAQ:SYMC), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), and CA, Inc. (NASDAQ:CA).
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In the eyes of most traders, hedge funds are assumed to be underperforming, old investment tools of the past. While there are more than 8000 funds in operation at present, Hedge fund experts at Insider Monkey look at the aristocrats of this group, around 730 funds. Contrary to popular belief Insider Monkey’s research revealed that hedge funds underperformed in recent years because of their short positions as well as the huge fees that they charge. Hedge funds managed to outperform the market on the long side of their portfolio. In fact, the 15 most popular small-cap stocks among hedge funds returned 102% since the end of August 2012 and beat the S&P 500 Index by 53 percentage points (see more details here).
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#5 CA, Inc. (NASDAQ:CA)
Shares held (as of September 30): 649,976
Total Value (as of September 30): $17.74 million
Percent of Portfolio (as of September 30): 0.24%
Bridgewater is bullish on CA, Inc. (NASDAQ:CA), as it increased its position in the stock by 819%. Although shares of the business software maker are down almost 10% year-to-date, they trade for a reasonable 10.93 times forward earnings and pay an attractive 3.73% dividend yield. The company reported in-line earnings results in October. Of the around 730 elite funds we track, 26 funds owned $332.18 million of CA, Inc. (NASDAQ:CA)’s shares. Those elite funds accounted for 2.60% of the float on June 30. Joel Greenblatt‘s Gotham Asset Management owned 2.31 million shares at the end of the second quarter.
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#4 Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)
Shares held (as of September 30): 471,008
Total Value (as of September 30): $20.85 million
Percent of Portfolio (as of September 30): 0.28%
Bridgewater increased its shares in Microsoft by 550% in the quarter. Under the leadership of new CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft is quickly moving beyond Windows and into future growth areas such as the cloud, augmented reality, and business productivity applications. The company’s third quarter beat expectations, with EPS of $0.67 on revenues of $21.7 billion, beating estimates by $0.08 per share and $670 million, respectively. Guidance is upbeat with management expecting second quarter revenues of $24.8 to $25.4 billion versus the consensus of $25.1 billion. Jeffrey Ubben’s ValueAct Capital owned 75.27 million shares at the end of June but has recently sold 18.7 million shares.
