Hedge Funds and other institutional investors have just completed filing their 13Fs with the Securities and Exchange Commission, revealing their equity portfolios as of the end of September. At Insider Monkey, we follow nearly 900 active hedge funds and notable investors and by analyzing their 13F filings, we can determine the stocks that they are collectively bullish on. One of their picks is Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), so let’s take a closer look at the sentiment that surrounds it in the current quarter.
Is Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) a splendid investment right now? The smart money was turning bullish. The number of long hedge fund positions rose by 12 lately. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) was in 146 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of December. The all time high for this statistic is 152. Our calculations also showed that AAPL ranked 10th among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q4 rankings). There were 134 hedge funds in our database with AAPL positions at the end of the third quarter.
Bart Baum of Ionic Capital Management
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Do Hedge Funds Think AAPL Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At fourth quarter’s end, a total of 146 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 9% from the third quarter of 2020. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards AAPL over the last 22 quarters. So, let’s check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
The largest stake in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) was held by Berkshire Hathaway, which reported holding $117714 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Fisher Asset Management with a $8130.6 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Millennium Management, Adage Capital Management, and AQR Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Berkshire Hathaway allocated the biggest weight to Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), around 43.61% of its 13F portfolio. Element Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 22.08 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to AAPL.
As industrywide interest jumped, key money managers have jumped into Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) headfirst. OZ Management, managed by Daniel S. Och, initiated the most outsized position in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL). OZ Management had $301.9 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Jeffrey Talpins’s Element Capital Management also made a $211.4 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Chris Rokos’s Rokos Capital Management, Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management, and Lei Zhang’s Hillhouse Capital Management.
Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL). We will take a look at Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA), Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE:BABA), and Taiwan Semiconductor Mfg. Co. Ltd. (NYSE:TSM). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble AAPL’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| MSFT | 258 | 52899029 | 24 |
| AMZN | 273 | 51531301 | 28 |
| GOOGL | 179 | 21902583 | 17 |
| FB | 242 | 38233910 | 12 |
| TSLA | 68 | 12308025 | 1 |
| BABA | 156 | 17892090 | -10 |
| TSM | 72 | 11843403 | 5 |
| Average | 178.3 | 29515763 | 11 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 178.3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $29516 million. That figure was $141811 million in AAPL’s case. Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) is the least popular one with only 68 bullish hedge fund positions. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for AAPL is 68.8. Stocks with higher number of hedge fund positions relative to other stocks as well as relative to their historical range receive a higher sentiment score. This is a slightly negative signal and we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. Our calculations showed that top 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 81.2% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 26 percentage points. These stocks gained 12.3% in 2021 through April 19th and surpassed the market again by 0.9 percentage points. Unfortunately AAPL wasn’t nearly as successful as these 30 stocks. AAPL investors were disappointed as the stock returned 1.8% since the end of December (through 4/19) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the more diversified list of the top 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market since the beginning of 2020.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
