ClearBridge Investments, an investment management company, released its “ClearBridge Growth Strategy” fourth quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. Due to stock-specific weakness in a handful of holdings and a lack of exposure to several of the top-performing, higher-beta growth companies, the strategy underperformed its benchmark the Russell Mid Cap Growth Index in a momentum-driven market. Following Trump’s victory, small-cap, value, and cyclical shares saw a spike in price; however, growth stocks regained their lead by the end of the quarter. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.
ClearBridge Growth Strategy highlighted stocks like Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR), in the fourth quarter 2024 investor letter. Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR) offers software platforms for the intelligence community. The one-month return of Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR) was -6.79%, and its shares gained 309.05% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On January 8, 2025, Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR) stock closed at $68.23 per share with a market capitalization of $155.429 billion.
ClearBridge Growth Strategy stated the following regarding Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“To promote balance, manage risk and augment the portfolio’s growth characteristics, we continued to take profits in some of our more established, larger holdings to seed new purchases. We believe that the arms race and value unlock from AI will provide a multiyear tailwind to a number of companies in our coverage. To maintain exposure to this theme, we used some of our profit taking in Broadcom to initiate new positions in AI-levered names AppLovin and Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR).
Palantir is a software-as-a-service provider with an AI-powered operating system that connects data to existing customer applications. Palantir’s platform acts as a hub to improve business outcomes across government and commercial end markets, allowing users to synthesize diverse data sources into actionable insights in real time. The company is highly profitable and growing rapidly at scale with 80%+ gross margins. Given the stock’s more elevated valuation we are being mindful of position size.”
A software engineer intently typing code into a laptop with multiple screens in an office.
Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 43 hedge fund portfolios held Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR) at the end of the third quarter which was 44 in the previous quarter. While we acknowledge the potential of Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR) 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 Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR) and shared the list of AI stocks that skyrocketed in Q4 2024 along with experts’ opinions on the future of AI. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q4 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.