We recently compiled a list of the 10 Best Guru Stocks To Buy Now. In this article, we will have a look at where Snowflake Inc. (NYSE:SNOW) ranks among the best guru stocks to buy now.
Due to the plethora of investment options such as equities, bonds, and mutual funds that are available today, picking the right set of vehicles to either preserve or grow money can often seem to be a daunting task. This makes it unsurprising that one of the most well known quotes of Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway is one where he states “In my view, for most people, the best thing to do is own the S&P 500 index fund.” In fact, Buffett is one of the strongest detractors of picking individual stocks. Further elaborating on this approach, he shares that the “trick is not to pick the right company, the trick is to essentially buy all the big companies through the S&P 500 and to do it consistently and to do it in a very, very low cost way.” This is key, according to the famous investor, since “you do not want to ever get the impression that you can pick stocks.”
However, while stock picking might not be for the everyday investor, for hedge funds, it’s their way of living. Every day hundreds of funds buy and sell shares with the hopes of generating a profit and spotting the next Apple. This approach tends to yield results too, even during tough economic and stock market performance. In fact, last year which saw the stock market bifurcated primarily on the basis of AI and non AI and large and non large cap stocks when it came to returns, nevertheless also saw hedge funds triple their gains for investors.
As per data from LCH Investments, the top 20 best performing hedge funds generated $67 billion in profits for investors in 2023, which surpassed their $63 in profits in 2021 when the stock market was booming after the pandemic. Their true gains however came over the 2022 profits, when high rates universally decimated the market as back then, the top performers had raked in $22.4 billion. Roughly 20% of the bumper $67 figure came from TCI Investments as it raked in $12.9 billion during 2023.
Safe to say, the hedge funds seem to know what they’re doing. This then makes us wonder if there is a way one could combine Buffett’s advice of sticking to a collection of stocks and the top stocks of the hedge funds. Fortunately, there is one such way to do so. This is through the GURU exchange traded fund. This fund, which has produced 16.96% in fund net asset value average annualized gains over the past year, seeks to enable “everyday investors to access the high conviction investments of some of the largest, most sophisticated hedge funds in the world.”
In terms of price, this fund was trading at $40.34 at the start of 2024, meaning that its recent closing price of $46.52 has led to an appreciation of 15.22%. This closely mirrors the benchmark SEC index, which has gained 18.80% year to date. Over the past twelve months, the ETF has gained 24.10% while the S&P is up by 26.52%. This rudimentary analysis ignores the impact of payouts on the fund’s returns, and the ETF has a semi annual payout rate along with an expense ratio of 0.75%.
More than a quarter of its holdings are in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and software industries. These are among the highest growth sectors that you are likely to find on Wall Street. As an example, while the benchmark S&P’s forward P/E ratio was 22 in February 2024, the forward ratio for system and application software firms right now is 56.93 while for the biotechnology sector, it is 73.20. This underscores the growth focused nature of the hedge fund industry and the ETF and indicates that perhaps they are positioning themselves for future economic conditions.
These economic conditions see investors widely expecting interest rates to come down. The current sentiment wave started in August when Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell shared at the Jackson Hole conference that “The time has come for policy to adjust. The direction of travel is clear, and the timing and pace of rate cuts will depend on incoming data, the evolving outlook, and the balance of risks. ” This means that firms that require copious capital for growth, such as biotechnology stocks, or those that rely on hefty enterprise spending such as cloud computing and software as a service (SaaS) stocks, can see tailwinds in the future.
This changed sentiment is also reflected in the price of the Guru ETF. In early August when investors were still jittery for rate cuts, the fund’s price had dipped to $41.29 close to the end of the first week. Now, with the debate on Wall Street having shifted to the intensity of the cuts rather than the certainty, the recent price of $46.52 marks a heft 12.7% share price appreciation. This also saw the cloud and pharma stocks jump in the immediate aftermath of the rate cuts but close lower as investors digested the data set.
So, with these details in mind, let’s take a look at what the gurus are doing by checking out the best guru stocks to buy.
Our Methodology
To make our list of the best guru stocks to buy, we ranked the holdings of the Guru ETF by their average analyst share price upside percentage and picked out the stocks with the highest upside.
For these stocks, we also mentioned the number of hedge fund investors based on Insider Monkey’s research. 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).
Snowflake Inc. (NYSE:SNOW)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q2 2024: 69
Average Analyst Share Price Target: $167.52
Average Analyst Share Price Target Upside: 50%
Snowflake Inc. (NYSE:SNOW) is a data warehousing company that enables businesses to consolidate their data in a single platform to generate insights. It is the second data focused stock on our list of the best Guru stocks to buy, which underscores the importance of this segment to investing when it comes to hedge fund sentiment. This is unsurprising since data is the oil of the artificial intelligence industry and Snowflake Inc. (NYSE:SNOW) is one of the leaders in this space. Estimates show that the firm commands a 22% market share, which provides it with key cost benefits that SaaS stocks hinge on along with stable industry partnerships which are key for stable recurring revenue. For Snowflake Inc. (NYSE:SNOW), this also means that when compared to some other SaaS companies that might struggle as AI enables businesses to develop their own software, the firm can weather the storm by providing data warehousing services. However, growth and cost control are key, as evidenced after the Q2 2025 earnings call when a lack of a margin forecast update led to the stock falling by 14%.
Baron Funds mentioned Snowflake Inc. (NYSE:SNOW) in its Q2 2024 investor letter. Here is what the fund said:
“Snowflake Inc. is a leading cloud data platform that is predominantly used for data analytics. The stock declined 16.4% as investors evaluated the impact of a recently announced CEO transition, an investment cycle driven by spend on AI, a cybersecurity incident, and a rapidly changing competitive environment. With GenAI capturing a larger portion of the public discourse, Snowflake’s positioning in the future data stack is under scrutiny by both investors and customers. We believe Sridhar Ramaswamy, the newly appointed CEO, can help the business more efficiently transition toward an AI-first world. While Databricks and other key competitors are presenting strong results, we believe Snowflake’s brand, existing customer base, and accelerating product innovation should allow it to continue to capture share in a relatively large and strategic market. Management continues to describe strong demand trends for its core data analytics, which is also demonstrated by the relatively healthy expansion rates among existing customers while new go-to-market initiatives can help grow the customer base further. Longer term, we remain excited about the Snowflake’s strategic opportunity as the data platform for its customers.”
Overall SNOW ranks 4th on our list of the best guru stocks to buy. While we acknowledge the potential of SNOW as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some 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 SNOW but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: $30 Trillion Opportunity: 15 Best Humanoid Robot Stocks to Buy According to Morgan Stanley and Jim Cramer Says NVIDIA ‘Has Become A Wasteland’.
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published on Insider Monkey.
