Artisan Partners, an investment management company, released its “Artisan Small Cap Fund” third quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The third quarter saw strength in small cap stocks, particularly in July when the return on the Russell 2000 Index was 10.2%. In the quarter, its Investor Class fund ARTSX returned 9.02%, Advisor Class fund APDSX posted a return of 9.04%, and Institutional Class fund APHSX returned 9.06%, compared to a return of 8.41% for the Russell 2000 Growth Index. Outperformance of the fund in the quarter was driven by positive security selection within health care and consumer discretionary sectors. In addition, you can check the fund’s top 5 holdings to find out its best picks for 2024.
Artisan Small Cap Fund highlighted stocks like MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:MKTX), in the third quarter 2024 investor letter. MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:MKTX) is an electronic trading platform for institutional investors and broker-dealer companies. The one-month return of MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:MKTX) was -12.08%, and its shares lost 17.35% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On December 11, 2024, MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:MKTX) stock closed at $234.86 per share with a market capitalization of $8.86 billion.
Artisan Small Cap Fund stated the following regarding MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:MKTX) in its Q3 2024 investor letter:
“Notable adds in the quarter included Intapp, Modine Manufacturing and MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:MKTX). As one of the leading US electronic credit trading networks, MarketAxess is, we believe, in a pole position to capture trading volume market share as global credit markets shift to electronic trading venues. We believe this transition is still in its early stages within US investment-grade corporate bonds, US high yield corporate bonds, emerging markets corporate bonds and Eurobonds. Other opportunities, such as municipal bonds, are even earlier in the transition to electronic trading. After failing to capture a greater market share of trading volume for several quarters, we added to the position on the belief that the worst was behind it. The August and September monthly data releases have been supportive of our thesis.”
MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:MKTX) is not on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 42 hedge fund portfolios held MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:MKTX) at the end of the third quarter which was 30 in the previous quarter. In the third quarter, MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:MKTX) delivered revenue of $207 million, up 20% from Q3 2023. While we acknowledge the potential of MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:MKTX) 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 MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:MKTX) and shared The Brown Capital Management Mid Company Fund’s views on the company in the previous quarter. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q3 2024 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.
READ NEXT: Michael Burry Is Selling These Stocks and A New Dawn Is Coming to US Stocks.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.