Billionaire Carl Icahn’s Long Term Picks $AMLN $BIIB $CHK $EXEL $HAIN $TTWO $LGF $MENT

Billionaire corporate raider Carl Icahn recently announced that he will be returning $1.76 billion back to his investors. He will continue investing his own money. He is an excellent insider to imitate because his moves are usually bigger than an average hedge fund’s transactions and he has to report them more promptly on 13D forms because he usually takes activist positions.

According to 13F filings, Icahn Capital had 26 securities with a total value of $6.2 billion in its 13F portfolio as of March 31, 2011. Icahn had 13 positions in his portfolio that he also had positions a year ago. (You can check out Icahn’s current top holdings here). These are the stocks in which Icahn has conviction.

1. AMYLIN PHARMACEUTICALS INC (AMLN): AMLN recently traded at $10.11 and lost 49.2% during the past 12 months. The stock has a market cap of $1.5 billion. Icahn had $164 million invested in AMLN shares. Steven Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors and Christopher Medlock James’ Partner Fund Management also have relatively small positions in AMLN.

2. BIOGEN IDEC INC (BIIB): BIIB recently traded at $90.98 and gained 60.71% during the past 12 months. The stock has a market cap of $22.1 billion and P/E ratio of 20.63. Icahn had $944 million invested in BIIB shares. On July 26 BIIB announced its second quarter 2011 financial results. BIIB’s second quarter revenues were $1.2 billion, constant compared to the second quarter of 2010. Net income for the second quarter was $288 million, a decrease of 2% from the second quarter of previous year. Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies and Cliff Asness’ AQR Capital Management are other high profile Biogen investors (see Jim Simons’ top holdings here).

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