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 Marriott Vacations Worldwide Corporation (NYSE: VAC), and shared their insights on the company. Marriott Vacations Worldwide Corporation is a Orlando, Florida-based vacation company that currently has a $7.2 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, VAC delivered an 18.56% return, extending its 12-month gains to 137.12%. As of May 12, 2021, the stock closed at $162.69 per share.
Here is what Baron Growth Fund has to say about Marriott Vacations Worldwide Corporation in its Q1 2021 investor letter:
“Our Consumer Discretionary investments have fared much better than the industry as a whole and are continuing to enjoying the same month-over-month improvements. Marriott Vacations Worldwide Corp.’s new contract sales improved by 27% over the prior quarter, and reservations the second half of 2021 are running 8% above pre-COVID levels.
Shares of timeshare company Marriott Vacations Worldwide Corp. increased in the quarter on accelerated sales driven largely by increased demand in Orlando and Hawaii. The company’s announcement of its acquisition of Welk also helped boost its share price. We think added inventory and cost synergies from its Welk acquisition will help improve the company’s balance sheet and cash flow profile.”
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Our calculations show that Marriott Vacations Worldwide Corporation (NYSE: VAC) 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, Marriott Vacations Worldwide Corporation was in 21 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 17 funds in the third quarter. VAC delivered a 13.90% 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.
