Billionaire George Soros’ Top Picks and Notable Moves Ahead of 2017

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Last year, billionaire George Soros lost his social and political clout by betting against the winning candidate, Donald Trump, during the U.S. presidential election. Aside from the money he donated to pro-Clinton Super PACs or to liberal charities, his own hedge fund Soros Fund Management, is estimated to have lost $1 billion in 2016, according to research done by hedge-fund investor LCH Investments NV. However, the fund made some major changes to its portfolio going into 2017 and in this post we are going to focus on them

According to the latest 13F filing submitted by Soros Fund Management, its long US equity portfolio at the end of 2016 was worth $4.32 billion at the end of December, which was 8.2% higher compared to the end of September. The equity portfolio had an extremely high turnover ratio of 115.12% last quarter and at the last of December, the top 10 equity holdings alone amassed over 50% of the value.

We follow over 700 hedge funds and other institutional investors and by analyzing their quarterly 13F filings, we identify stocks that they are collectively bullish on and develop investment strategies based on this data. One strategy that outperformed the market over the last year involves selecting the 100 best-performing funds and identifying the 30 mid-cap stocks that they are collectively the most bullish on. Over the past year, this strategy generated returns of 39.7%, topping the 24.1% gain registered by S&P 500 ETFs. See our list of 140 biggest and most famous activist hedge funds. Insider Monkey’s enhanced small-cap strategy registered gains of more than 45% over the last 12 months and outperformed SPY by more than 30 percentage points in the last 4.5 years (see the details here).

George Soros

Time Warner Inc (NYSE:TWX)

– Shares Held By Soros Fund Management (as of December 31): 434,000

– Value of The Holding (as of December 31): $41.9 Million

Let’s begin with Time Warner Inc (NYSE:TWX), which represented a new position in Soros Fund Management’s equity portfolio in the fourth quarter. At the beginning of the fourth quarter, telecom giant AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) announced that it has reached a deal with Time Warner Inc (NYSE:TWX) to acquire it for $85.4 billion. Following this announcement, shares of Time Warner rose significantly and ended the fourth quarter with gains of over 20%. However, they have been range bound this year and are trading at a significant discount to the $107.50 per share offer made by AT&T, which points to concerns among market participants about the deal getting completed. On February 15, Time Warner shareholders approved the proposed merger with AT&T, but the deal still needs to gain several regulatory approvals before it materializes. Following Time Warner’s better than expected four quarter result declaration earlier this month, on February 9, analysts at FBR & Co. reiterated their ‘Buy’ rating on the stock.

Follow Warner Media Llc (NYSE:TWX)

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