Millennium Management is a New York-based hedge fund that was founded in 1989 by billionaire Israel Englander. Currently, Israel Englander, who has more than 35 years of experience in securities and derivatives, is Millennium Management’s chairman and chief executive officer. Englander’s hedge fund has delivered an annualized return of roughly 14.5% since its inception. Moreover, the financial crisis of 2008 did not hit Englander’s main fund, Millennium Partners LP, too hard as it reported losses of as little as 3% in 2008 compared to the overall market record decline of 19%. The 25-year-old hedge fund currently manages a portfolio valued at $53.74 billion and mainly invests in the following sectors: the services, healthcare, technology, energy and financial sectors. As stated by Millennium Management’s latest 13F filing, some of this fund’s mid-cap energy stock picks include the following companies: Ameren Corporation (NYSE:AEE), Newfield Exploration Co. (NYSE:NFX), NiSource Inc. (NYSE:NI) and DTE Energy Company (NYSE:DTE).
The reason we follow Millennium Management alongside more than 700 other hedge funds is to identify some investment ideas that could generate strong returns for smaller investors, which don’t have a lot of capital and, hence, can’t benefit as much from investing in large- and mega-cap stocks as hedge funds. Through backtests, we determined that 50 most popular picks of hedge funds generally underperform the market by around 7 basis points per month. On the other hand, imitating 15 most popular small-cap ideas of these investors, can beat the S&P 500 Total Return Index by almost 1.0 percentage points per month and generate a double-digit annual alpha. For the last 2.5 years, this system generated returns of more than 130% and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by some 80 percentage points (read more details here).
Millennium Management’s position in Ameren Corporation (NYSE:AEE) increased to 6.87 million shares at the end of March from 1.95 million shares reported a quarter ago, the value of the new stake amounting to $289.81 million. Ameren Corporation has delivered strong financial results for the first quarter, with a better-than-expected profit of $0.35 per share compared to the estimates of $0.35. Despite the fact that the St. Louis-based utility company is currently exposed to instable commodity prices and rigorous environmental regulations, the company managed to outpace the analysts’ expectations. Nevertheless, the stock has plummeted by nearly 13% since the beginning of the year, which might represent a great buying opportunity for bottom-fishers. Jonathan Barrett and Paul Segal’s Luminus Management is one of the hedge funds in our database that initiated a long position in Ameren Corporation (NYSE:AEE) during the first quarter, reporting 1.13 million shares in its latest 13F filing.
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Israel Englander increased his stake in Newfield Exploration Co. (NYSE:NFX) by 4.33 million shares, closing the quarter with 7.32 million shares worth $256.82 million. Newfield Exploration is one of the best performing stocks from the energy sector in 2015, reaching an upsurge of more than 35% since the beginning of the year. Moreover, Goldman Sachs upgraded Newfield to “Buy” from “Neutral” a week ago, which might be a signal that the stock can go even higher in the upcoming months. It is expected that the company will achieve an increase in the production estimates as the outlook for Newfield Exploration Co. (NYSE:NFX)’s activities in the Anadarko Basin, which has a predominantly thick section of Pennsylvanian rocks that represent a productive oil and gas producer, is quite positive. In the meantime, the largest shareholder of Newfield Exploration Co. (NYSE:NFX) among the funds we track is Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group.
Millennium Management reported a 240% increase of its holding in NiSource Inc. (NYSE:NI) to 5.54 million shares, which are valued at $244.75 million as of March 31, 2015. In September, NiSource announced that the company intends to separate its natural gas pipeline and other related business into a publicly traded company, Columbia Pipeline Group, while NiSource would become a regulated natural gas and electric utilities company. The separation will be completed on July 1, 2015 and only time will show whether the process of separation has been successful. However, the stock is up nearly 11% year-to-date, which might be a clear sign that the company has been quite successful following the separation. The second-largest shareholder of NiSource Inc. (NYSE:NI) right behind Englander’s Millennium Management is Phil Gross and Robert Atchinson’s Adage Capital Management.
According to the latest 13F filing, Millennium Management purchased a 2.88 million-share stake in DTE Energy Company (NYSE:DTE), which is valued at $232.41 million, during the first quarter. DTE Energy, a Detroit-based diversified energy company, has recently announced that it will build and operate the two largest solar arrays in Michigan in cooperation with Domino’s Farms and Ford Motor Company.DTE Energy Company (NYSE:DTE) has already started the construction of a solar installation at Domino’s Farms, which is part of a project comprised of more than 4,000 panels. According to DTE Energy’s official, this large-scale project is an example of how this company cooperates with its clients to build a more sustainable future. Having said that, it is quite clear that DTE Energy’s future financial performance will be strong as the company is constantly increasing its activities and operations throughout the country. Cliff Asness’ AQR Capital Management is among the largest investors in DTE Energy Company (NYSE:DTE), owning a stake valued at $166.05 million.
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