5 Technology Stocks Billionaires Were Piling Into in Q3

Priceline Group Inc. (NASDAQ:PCLN) shares the second spot with Apple Inc. Five billionaires initiated brand new positions in Priceline during the third quarter. Eighty five hedge funds from our database had positions in Priceline Group, with total holdings of about $7.24 billion as on the end of June. These numbers jumped to 98 and $8.2 billion respectively by the end of September. Billionaire activist Barry Rosenstein’s Jana Partners, quant billionaire Jim Simons’ RenTech and Julian Robertson’s Tiger Management were among the funds that initiated brand new positions. The company recently announced its third quarter earnings at $23.41 per share, up from $10.13 per share it had reported for the corresponding quarter of the previous year. Its revenue stood at $3.102 billion, down from $3.69 billion for the previous third quarter.

Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has two seperate tickers and we considered each ticker seperately for this ranking. The number of funds from our hedge fund database long Alphabet was at 135 at the end of June.This number increased to 137 by the end of September. Surprisingly four billionaires initiated brand new positions in GOOGL shares. Billionaire Ken Griffin’s Citadel Advisors initiated a $500+ million position while billionaire Steve Cohen invested more than a third of a billion dollars. Louis Bacon and Stan Druckenmiller also initiated smaller positions in Alphabet Inc. Morgan Stanley opined that the company’s newly introduced Pixel phone may be worth $3.8 billion for the company next year.

Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) is the most popular stock among billionaires. There were 20 billionaires with bullish Facebook Inc. positions at the end of June and three more billionaires joined them by the end of September. Interestingly, total dollar amount invested by billionaires actually went down recently as Stephen Mandel sold around $450 million worth of stock. Ken Griffin also sold a third of his position which was more than $500 million. Billionaires Steve Cohen, David Tepper, and Dan Loeb purchased the most Facebook Inc. shares during the third quarter.

DISCLOSURE – NONE