Baron Funds, an asset management firm, published its “Baron Growth Fund” first quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of 0.94% was delivered by the fund’s institutional shares for the Q1 of 2021, trailing its primary benchmark, the Russell 2000 Growth Index, that rose to 4.88% and the S&P 500 Index that delivered a 6.17% return for the same period. You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.
Baron Growth Fund, in its Q1 2021 investor letter, mentioned Bio-Techne Corporation (NASDAQ: TECH), and shared their insights on the company. Bio-Techne Corporation is a Minneapolis, Minnesota-based biotechnology company that currently has a $15.9 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, TECH delivered a 28.76% return, extending its 12-month gains to 56.16%. As of May 12, 2021, the stock closed at $408.88 per share.
Here is what Baron Growth Fund has to say about Bio-Techne Corporation in its Q1 2021 investor letter:
“While the market was focused on cyclical stocks during the quarter, we remain excited about the sustainable growth prospects of our secular-growth oriented portfolio over our five-year investment horizon. We believe that end market conditions are improving for almost all our investments, most notably for those that did not benefit from a COVID-driven tailwind last year. Bio-Techne Corporation will benefit from the reopening of research laboratories, which should reaccelerate demand for its portfolio of proteins and antigens.”
Our calculations show that Bio-Techne Corporation (NASDAQ: TECH) 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, Bio-Techne Corporation was in 24 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 30 funds in the third quarter. TECH delivered a 4.76% 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.