1. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)
Value of Fisher Asset Management’s 13F Position: $10.2 billion
Number of Hedge Fund Shareholders: 138
Topping the list of stocks that Ken Fisher and Jim Cramer both love is Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), which has been Fisher’s top stock pick for nearly four years. He’s held the position since the fourth quarter of 2005, during which time it’s gained over 7,000%. While Apple does rank as one of the most popular stocks among hedge funds, it widely trails several other tech giants, including Microsoft and Alphabet.
In July, Jim Cramer said that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is crushing it thanks to having the best subscription service model in the world. He then told viewers in early August to “Own Apple. Don’t trade it” in light of the company’s “incredible numbers” (including $81.8 billion in fiscal Q3 revenue). He’s also bullish on Apple’s manufacturing expansion into India, where it now makes about 7% of its phones, up from just 1% in 2021, saying in April that he was very excited about that development given that it helps insulate the company from the uncertainty and political tension surrounding China.
Choice Equities Capital Management put Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s staggering $3 trillion market cap in context in its second quarter 2023 investor letter:
“Dramatic valuation differences across market cap sizes continue. This has been the case for some time now. Perhaps I have spent too much time discussing these dichotomies, as generally, I feel like if we pick the right stocks and manage market exposures thoughtfully, our equities- oriented portfolio will prosper across various market cycles. However, when markets become as lopsided as they have lately, I feel additional discussion on the market environment is worthwhile, if only to help highlight the opportunities that are available and the likely path forward. I expect future discussions to soon be focused again on our moderately concentrated portfolio. But for now, let’s take one last in-depth look at how far reaching these valuation dichotomies have again become.(Please note: charts that accompany the following can be found in the Appendix.)
Take Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) for example. It is the largest stock by market cap, and fairly considered one of the best companies in the world. The company has been extraordinarily successful and improved standards of living everywhere in the process with their ubiquitous products. Along the way, shareholders have been richly rewarded, with shares increasing nearly fourteen-fold over the last ten years while generating an annualized total shareholder return of 31%, including dividends.
On the back of another big quarter for large cap tech, it is now the first stock to surpass the $3T market cap threshold. This makes its weighting in the ~$37T market cap of the S&P 500, ~8%. It also means this one stock’s market cap is larger than that of the entire ~$2.98T market cap of the Russell 2000 index, the first time in history a single stock has outweighed the Russell 2000 – aside from two brief days in September 2020 when Apple’s market cap then accomplished the same…” (Click here to read the full text)
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Disclosure: None.
