Artisan Partners, an investment management company, released its “Artisan Small Cap Fund” second quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In Q2, data indicated strong US economic activity and a robust labor market, while inflation gradually moved closer to the Fed’s 2% target. In the second quarter, its Investor Class fund ARTSX returned -4.45%, Advisor Class fund APDSX posted a return of -4.40%, and Institutional Class fund APHSX returned -4.38%, compared to a return of -2.92% for the Russell 2000 Growth Index. From a sector standpoint, the underperformance was due to negative security selection, while the impact of allocation was slightly positive. 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 MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR), in the second quarter 2024 investor letter. MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR) provides artificial intelligence-powered enterprise analytics software and services. The one-month return of MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR) was 27.62%, and its shares gained 287.34% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On July 29, 2024, MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR) stock closed at $1,684.85 per share with a market capitalization of $29.885 billion.
Artisan Small Cap Fund stated the following regarding MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:
“Regarding MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR), our decision to avoid this company comes down to a lack of conviction in its franchise characteristics. The stock has worked this year due to a rebound in the price of bitcoin. Since 2020, MicroStrategy has been focused on converting its cash and cash equivalent holdings, as well as issuing debt, to fund the purchase of bitcoin, which now makes up most of the company’s value.”
A software engineer wearing a headset, collaborating with a remote team on a project.
MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR) is not on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 22 hedge fund portfolios held MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR) at the end of the first quarter which was 16 in the previous quarter. In the first quarter, the Bitcoin holdings of the company increased in value by $5.4 billion as the price rose from $42,500 to $71,000. Total revenues of MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR) were $115.2 million in the quarter, down about 5% year-over-year. While we acknowledge the potential of MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR) 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 MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR) and shared the list of most profitable stocks of the last 20 years. In their Q1 2024 investor letter, Artisan Small Cap Fund mentioned that MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR) performed well this year, driven by a recovery in Bitcoin prices. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q2 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.
