Bretton Fund recently released its Q4 2020 Investor Letter, a copy of which you can download here. The fund posted a return of 11.52% for the quarter, underperforming its benchmark, the S&P 500 Index which returned 12.15% in the same quarter. You should check out Brown Capital Management’s top 5 stock picks for investors to buy right now, which could be the biggest winners of 2021.
In the Q4 2020 Investor Letter, the fund spoke about JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE:JPM) and Bank Of America Corp (NYSE:BAC) stocks. JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE:JPM) and Bank Of America Corp (NYSE:BAC) are financial services companies. In the last three months, JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE:JPM) stock gained 25.1% and on March 4th it had a closing price of $150.56. In the last three months, Bank Of America Corp (NYSE:BAC) stock gained 24.4% and on March 4th it had a closing price of $36.50. Here is what the fund said:
“After a strong performance in 2019, we wrote this about our bank stocks in last year’s report: “There will be another recession sooner than later, and our banks will see larger loans losses, but we think this is more than priced into the stock, and our banks are well reserved for that eventuality.” Little did we know “sooner” really meant “a few weeks from now.” Despite the economic shock, the banks still have huge capital cushions that can absorb large loan losses. Our remaining bank investments, JPMorgan and Bank of America, increased their reserves significantly at the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis in anticipation of imminent loan defaults, but with the government stimulus and perhaps a more resilient economy than many would have guessed, actual loan losses are up only slightly. They might happen later in 2021, but with an additional stimulus package and the vaccine rolling out, the large-scale losses may not be as bad as most people predicted. The bigger drag on the banks’ earnings power is lower rates, which in our opinion will persist for a long time. Despite this drag, we estimate both JPMorgan and Bank of America will continue to grow revenue and earnings over the next few years, while we believe their stocks remain bargains in a somewhat expensive market. JPMorgan’s earnings per share declined 17% last year, and its stock returned -5.5%. Bank of America’s earnings, which are more sensitive to interest rates, were down 32%, and its stock returned -11.6%.”
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Last week, we published an article revealing that JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE:JPM) and Bank Of America Corp (NYSE:BAC) are one of the top 10 mortgage stocks to buy now.
Our calculations showed that JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE:JPM) and Bank Of America Corp (NYSE:BAC) are ranked #17 and #22 among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds.
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.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
