ClearBridge Investments, an investment management firm, published its “Large Cap Growth Strategy” first quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. The ClearBridge Large Cap Growth Strategy underperformed its Russell 1000 Growth Index benchmark during the first quarter. On an absolute basis, the Strategy had gains across four of the eight sectors in which it was invested (out of 11 sectors total). You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.
ClearBridge Investments, in its Q1 2021 investor letter, mentioned Sea Limited (NYSE: SE), and shared their insights on the company. Sea Limited is a Singapore-based internet company that currently has a $136.6 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, SE delivered a 32.17% return, extending its 12-month gains to 197.00%. As of June 09, 2021, the stock closed at $263.08 per share.
Here is what ClearBridge Investments has to say about Sea Limited in its Q1 2021 investor letter:
“We continued to keep our learnings from 2020 in mind during the quarter as we sought to increase the up capture of the portfolio. Adding to those names, as well as the purchase of Singapore-based video game platform Sea Limited, increased our select exposure by about 200 basis points in the first quarter to 36% of the overall portfolio.
Sea maintains leading positions in Southeast Asia in video games and e-commerce and operates an emerging digital payments and banking business. While the company is investing heavily into ecommerce and payments, this growth is being funded by its highly profitable gaming segment. We see a long runway for growth across Sea’s businesses with multiple opportunities like ecommerce expansion in Latin America not fully factored into the valuation today. The company also has a well-respected management team that has successfully executed in expanding its total addressable market. Along with existing holding Alibaba, Sea provides exposure to secular growth trends in emerging markets that are harder to replicate through U.S. stocks.”
![](https://imonkey-blog.imgix.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/08080650/alvaro-reyes-6avV9oeHxfo-unsplash-1-750x500.jpg?auto=fortmat&fit=clip&expires=1755993600&width=480&height=320)
Photo by Alvaro Reyes on Unsplash
Our calculations show that Sea Limited (NYSE: SE) ranks 22nd in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As of the end of the first quarter of 2021, Sea Limited was in 98 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 115 funds in the fourth quarter of 2020. SE delivered an 11.10% 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.