Here’s What Overshadowed Alphabet’s (GOOG) Performance

Polen Capital, an investment management company, released its “Polen Focus Growth Strategy” third quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The market turned volatile in the third quarter. In the third quarter, the fund returned 3.21% (gross) and 2.99% (net) compared to 3.19% for the Russell 1000 Growth Index and 5.89% for the S&P 500 Index. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.

Polen Focus Growth Strategy highlighted stocks like Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) in its Q3 2024 investor letter. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), the parent company of Google, offers various platforms and services operating through Google Services, Google Cloud, and Other Bets segments. The one-month return of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) was 9.39%, and its shares gained 36.16% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On November 11, 2024, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) stock closed at $181.97 per share with a market capitalization of $2.217 trillion.

Polen Focus Growth Strategy stated the following regarding Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) in its Q3 2024 investor letter:

“Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Amazon were also top absolute detractors. Alphabet’s better-than-expected results were overshadowed by an adverse ruling related to the U.S. Department of Justice’s (“DoJ”) anti-trust case against the company. We expected an adverse ruling and are monitoring potential remedies recommended by the DoJ and subsequently ruled on by the judge. This will likely take a few years to play out; in the meantime, we see many mitigating factors that the company can pursue to protect its competitive position and growth. We trimmed our positions in Alphabet and Microsoft by 1.5% each to fund the purchase of Oracle. They both remain top five holdings at the new weights.”

A laptop and phone open to Google’s services in an everyday setting.

Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is in 7th position on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 165 hedge fund portfolios held Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) at the end of the second quarter which was 165 in the previous quarter. While we acknowledge the potential of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is as promising as NVIDIA but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

In another article, we discussed Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) and shared the list of AI news investors are paying attention to. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q3 2024 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.