Artisan Partners, a high value-added investment management firm, published its ‘Artisan Global Discovery Fund’ first quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of -3.56% was recorded by its Investor Class: APFDX, -3.55% by its Advisor Class: APDDX, and -3.50% by its Institutional Class: APHDX for the first quarter of 2021, all below the MSCI All Country World Index that delivered a 4.57% return for the same period. You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.
Ariel Investments, in its Q1 2021 investor letter, mentioned Burlington Stores, Inc. (NYSE: BURL), and shared their insights on the company. Burlington Stores, Inc. is a Burlington, New Jersey-based department store company that currently has a $21.5 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, BURL delivered a 23.64% return, extending its 12-month returns to 54.23%. As of May 28, 2021, the stock closed at $323.37 per share.
Here is what Ariel Investments has to say about Burlington Stores, Inc. its Q1 2021 investor letter:
“Burlington is a leading off-price retailer offering an assortment of apparel, footwear, home, beauty and toys. Shares have risen as investors are increasingly optimistic the company will benefit from higher consumer spending this year with the US economy expected to reopen. In addition to this cyclical tailwind, we believe the company has several internal drivers a relatively new CEO is spearheading. These include growing its store footprint through smaller formats (~30,000 square feet versus ~50,000 square feet) as it adapts to the evolving brick-and-mortar retail landscape, and closing its sizable margin gap with peers TJ Maxx and Ross by strengthening its merchant team, purchasing inventory items in-season (reacting to sales trends in real time) and reducing store inventory levels (fewer markdowns, higher merchandise margins).”
Our calculations show that Burlington Stores, Inc. (NYSE: BURL) does not belong in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As of the end of the first quarter of 2021, Burlington Stores, Inc. was in 32 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 29 funds in the fourth quarter of 2020. BURL delivered a 24.94% 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.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.