Billionaire Ken Griffin’s Most Promising Stock Picks

Citadel also liked another semiconductor company, ON Semiconductor Corp. (NASDAQ:ONNN), increasing its stake by 19% between July and September to a total of about 23 million shares. Eric Bannasch’s Cadian Capital had a similarly sized position in ON Semiconductor at the end of the quarter. As with LSI the trailing earnings multiple is high but Wall Street analysts expect a considerably better 2013. However, in this case sales have been down and this has driven the stock price down over the last year as well, against a rising market.

The fund nearly doubled the size of its position in GNC Holdings Inc (NYSE:GNC), and owned 3.5 million shares according to the 13F. GNC has more than doubled since shortly after its April 2011 IPO, and the company has been recording very good growth numbers on both top and bottom lines. Despite this good performance- net income, for example, was up 28% in the third quarter of 2012 compared to the same period in the previous year- the trailing P/E is only 17. We would note that there is considerable short interest in the stock, but GNC might still be a better buy than peers such as Walgreen Company (NYSE:WAG). Scopus Asset Management owned 2.5 million shares of stock at the end of September; that fund is managed by Alexander Mitchell (check out Scopus’s stock picks).

Disclosure: I own no shares of any stocks mentioned in this article.