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 Vail Resorts, Inc. (NYSE: MTN), and shared their insights on the company. Vail Resorts, Inc. is a Broomfield, Colorado-based mountain resort company that currently has a $12.4 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, MTN delivered a 10.75% return, extending its 12-month gains to 89.36%. As of May 11, 2021, the stock closed at $317.36 per share.
Here is what Baron Growth Fund has to say about Vail Resorts, Inc. 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. For example, skier visits to Vail Resorts, Inc. through early March declined by just 8.2% from last year. Vail’s total North American destination visits declined an even more modest 5%, despite travel and capacity restrictions in December. Daily retail sales for March were up three-fold versus pre-COVID levels in 2019, and ski school was sold out during the month. Vail’s management was able to grow its season pass sales by almost 20% through creative pricing, aggressive use of data and analytics, and consistently expanding guest value.”
victoire-joncheray-Fsw3IORqz8w-unsplash
Our calculations show that Vail Resorts, Inc. (NYSE: MTN) 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, Vail Resorts, Inc. was in 31 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 30 funds in the third quarter. MTN delivered a 7.57% 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.
At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost real estate prices. So, we recommended this real estate stock to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 15 best innovative stocks to buy to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our website:
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
