Baron Funds, an investment management firm, published its fourth quarter 2020 “Baron FinTech Fund” investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of 13.61% was recorded by its Retail Shares, and 13.67% by its Institutional Shares in the fourth quarter of 2020, both below its FactSet Global FinTech Benchmark that delivered a 21.35% return but above its S&P 500 index that was up by 12.15% in the same period. You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.
Baron FinTech Fund, in their Q4 2020 investor letter, mentioned MSCI Inc. (NYSE: MSCI) and emphasized their views on the company. MSCI Inc. is a New York-based finance company that currently has a $34.9 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, MSCI delivered a -5.48% return, but its 12-month gains are up by 54.42%. As of March 22, 2021, the stock closed at $419.36 per share.
Here is what Baron FinTech Fund has to say about MSCI Inc. in their Q4 2020 investor letter:
“Shares of MSCI, Inc., a leading provider of investment decision support tools, contributed to performance. The company reported solid third quarter earnings despite the challenging COVID-19 backdrop. Asset-based fee revenue grew due to market appreciation and inflows, while margins expanded due to proactive cost management. We retain long-term conviction as the company owns dominant, “all weather” franchises and remains well positioned to benefit from significant tailwinds i n the investment industry.”
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Our calculations show that MSCI Inc. (NYSE: MSCI) does not belong in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As of the end of the fourth quarter of 2020, MSCI Inc. was in 41 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 47 funds in the third quarter. MSCI delivered a -3.55% return in the past 3 months.
The top 10 stocks among hedge funds returned 231.2% between 2015 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 Index ETFs by more than 126 percentage points. We know it sounds unbelievable. You have been dismissing our articles about top hedge fund stocks mostly because you were fed biased information by other media outlets about hedge funds’ poor performance. You could have doubled the size of your nest egg by investing in the top hedge fund stocks instead of dumb S&P 500 ETFs. Here you can watch our video about the top 5 hedge fund stocks right now. All of these stocks had positive returns in 2020.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
