We recently published a list of 9 Best Stocks to Buy in 2024 According to Billionaire George Soros. Since Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) ranks 2nd in the list, it deserves a deeper look.
Billionaire George Soros has been one of the most active and divisive figures in the Wall Street. Often a right-wing target, the billionaire handed over the control of his $25 billion empire to his son Alexander Soros last year. The 93 year-old Hungarian American is known as the philosopher investor in the Wall Street, mainly due to his contributions to philosophy and his deep desire to leave his mark in the world of philosophy, which many believe he fulfilled thanks to his General Theory of Reflexivity for capital markets.
George Soros founded Soros Fund Management in 1970. Since its inception through 2010, the fund posted on average a 20% annual rate of return. A Wall Street Journal report earlier this year said that Soros Fund Management has posted a compound annual return of 13.5% over the past three years through June 30, 2023.
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George Soros in his book The New Paradigm of Financial Markets wrote a chapter titled “Autobiography of a Failed Philosopher” in which he talked in detail about how many, including his son and his biographer, started accepting the idea that Soros was a failed philosopher. Soros talks in detail about his childhood, his relationship with his father who at one point, according to Soros, lost all ambition in life and did not amass any wealth. A Jew by birth, Soros decided to come to the UK after the Nazi occupation of Hungary. Soros’ first interactions with philosophy started when he was impressed by the works of Karl Popper. But Soros’ dreams of creating a career in philosophy could not realize for several reasons, some of which he talks about in his book:
“I would have preferred to stay within the safe walls of academe—I even had a teaching assistant job prospect at the University of Michigan in Kalamazoo, but my grades were not good enough, and I was forced to go out into the real world. After several false starts, I ended up working as an arbitrage trader, first in London and then in New York.* At first I had to forget everything I had learned as a student in order to hold down my job, but eventually my college education came in very useful. In particular, I could apply my theory of reflexivity to establish a disequilibrium scenario or boom-bust pattern for financial markets. The rewarding part came when markets entered what I called far-from-equilibrium territory because that is when the generally accepted equilibrium models broke down.”
For this article we scanned Billionaire Soros’s Soros Fund Management’s Q1 portfolio and chose its top 9 stock picks. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).
Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN)
Billionaire George Soros’s Q1’2024 Stake Value: $71,341,913
Billionaire Soros’ fund owns a $71 million stake in Amazon as of the end of the first quarter. Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) is becoming an AI power house thanks to its AWS business, which saw operating margins cross 37% during the first quarter. AWS operating margins have now came in more than 30% for the past five straight quarters. Amazon.com Inc’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) revenue in the first quarter jumped 12.5% YoY and its adjusted EPS more than tripled. Revenue in North America and International segments grew as well. Analysts believe digital ads is another strong revenue stream for Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN), with revenue from the segment increasing 24% YoY to $11.8 billion in the first quarter.
However, Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) skeptics believe the stock has run too much as its valuation is high. For value-conscious investors the market is indeed teeming with other opportunities. If you are looking for an AI stock that is as promising as AMZN but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) replaced MSFT to take the spot of the most popular stock among the over 900 hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey. A total of 302 hedge funds reported owning stakes in Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN).
Overall, Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) ranks 3rd in Insider Monkey’s list of Billionaire George Soros’s 10 Best Stock Picks in 2024. You can visit 9 Best Stocks to Buy in 2024 According to Billionaire George Soros to see other stock picks of Billionaire George Soros. While we acknowledge the potential of Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN), 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 more promising than Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
