McKinley Capital Management’s Top Picks Include Apple Inc (AAPL), Facebook Inc (FB) & Gilead Sciences Inc (GILD)

McKinley Capital Management, headed by Robert B. Gillam, is an independent investment firm headquartered in Anchorage, Alaska, that focuses on the growth type of equities, including U.S., non-U.S., and active extension, global and alternative strategies across all capitalization spectrums. The fund oversees over $7 billion equivalent of assets with some $2.33 billion allocated for the 13F equity portfolio. The preferences of McKinley Capital Management in the 13F portfolio are inclined towards technology and consumer discretionary stocks, which amass nearly 40% of the equity portfolio in aggregate. So let’s take a closer look at McKinley Capital Management’s top picks and see how they performed in the last months.

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We pay attention to hedge funds’ moves because our research has shown that hedge funds are extremely talented at picking stocks on the long side of their portfolios. It is true that hedge fund investors have been underperforming the market in recent years. However, this was mainly because hedge funds’ short stock picks lost a ton of money during the bull market that started in March 2009. Hedge fund investors also paid an arm and a leg for the services that they received. We have been tracking the performance of hedge funds’ 15 most popular stock picks in real time since the end of August 2012. These stocks have returned 123.1% since then and outperformed the S&P 500 Index by around 66.5 percentage points (see more details here). That’s why we believe it is important to pay attention to hedge fund sentiment; we also don’t like paying huge fees.

The information from the most recent 13F filing, revealed that McKinley Capital had the largest holding in Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) at the end of June. Over the second quarter, Robert B. Gillam trimmed the stake in in the tech giant by 6%, leaving around 745,400 shares valued at $93.49 million. During the same period, the stock mostly traded sideways and inched up by 1.6%. Moreover, Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s stock has had a rough period lately, losing ground after the latest financial report, which indicated disappointing figures for iPhone sales, which missed the estimates. Carl Icahn’s Icahn Capital led the list of the most prominent investors in Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) with 52.76 million shares worth $6.57 billion at the end of March.