Alibaba Group Holding (BABA), Hospira (HSP), Philip Morris International (PM): Argentiere’s New Bets On Big Corporations

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) is up about 11.92% over the past calendar year. As far as its first quarter financial results are concerned, the financial holding company beat both revenue and earnings estimates. Corporate & Investment Bank was the largest contributor to the company’s bottom line with quarterly revenues of $2.54 billion as compared to $2.13 billion in the same quarter last year. The major underlying factor was robust client activity in FICC owing to macro events. Argentiere acquired 81,700 shares of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) valued at $4.95 million during the first quarter. Among other investors who feel particularly positive about the bank’s future prospects is Ken Fisher of Fisher Asset Management, as he held some 13.52 million shares of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) valued at $846.14 million at the end of the fourth quarter.

Finally, Argentiere’s newly initiated stake in SYSCO Corporation (NYSE:SYY) amounted to 125,000 shares valued at $4.72 million. The company has nearly 425,000 customers in the foodservice industry ranging from restaurants, healthcare and educational facilities, to hotels and inns. The stock is up by about 3.2% over the last year. Donald Yacktman’s Yacktman Asset Management is a prominent stockholder of SYSCO Corporation (NYSE:SYY).

Most investors don’t have enough time to do in-depth analysis on each stock that they want to include in their portfolios. Professional investors like Deepak Gulati spend weeks conducting due diligence on each company and spend millions obtaining information and paying the salaries of Ivy League-educated analysts. That’s why we have always believed that imitating the stock picks of hedge funds and billionaires is an excellent short cut we can take. We analyzed the historical stock picks of these investors and our research revealed that the small-cap picks of hedge funds performed better than the market and their large-cap picks. A portfolio of the 15 most popular small-caps among several hedge funds outperformed the S&P 500 Total Return Index by 95 basis points per month between 1999 and 2012. The exceptional results of this strategy got even better in the forward tests we have been conducting since the end of August 2012. The most popular small-cap stocks among hedge funds beat the market by more than 79 percentage points since (see the details here), returning over 137% during that time.

Disclosure: None