Ensemble Capital, an investment management firm, published its “Ensemble Fund” first quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be seen here. A return of 3.80% was delivered by the fund in the Q1 of 2021, below its S&P 500 benchmark that delivered a 6.17% return in the same period. You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.
Ensemble Capital, in their Q1 2021 investor letter, mentioned Intuitive Surgical, Inc. (NASDAQ: ISRG) and shared their insights on the company. Intuitive Surgical, Inc. is a Sunnyvale, California-based medical technology company that currently has a $104.4 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, ISRG delivered a 7.70% return, extending its 12-month gains to 72.04%. As of April 20, 2021, the stock closed at $811.11 per share.
Here is what Ensemble Capital has to say about Intuitive Surgical, Inc. in their Q1 2021 investor letter:
“Notable detractors to the Fund’s returns this quarter (included) Intuitive Surgical. Intuitive Surgical’s (6.3% weight in the Fund) growth slowed in 2020 as COVID hit the brakes on many elective surgeries. Given continued COVID-related risks in the US and Europe in 2021, it’s still unclear as to when elective surgeries recover to more normal levels. As such, hospitals may be holding off on planned surgical robot investments until demand rebounds. That said, in Asia, where COVID has been well contained, Intuitive Surgical’s procedures and systems utilizations improved, which bodes well for recovery in the US and EU. Most procedures can’t be delayed indefinitely or canceled, so we continue to expect a resumption of strong, durable growth as the pandemic recedes.”
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Our calculations show that Intuitive Surgical, Inc. (NASDAQ: ISRG) 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, Intuitive Surgical, Inc. was in 49 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 50 funds in the third quarter. ISRG delivered a 10.06% 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.
