Billionaire Leon Cooperman’s Top Picks Still Looking Down the Rabbit Hole

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Veteran investor Leon Cooperman‘s Omega Advisors has had two straight losing years with a 10% loss in 2015. From the looks of it, the first three months of this year haven’t provided the turnaround that the firm was looking for either. We took a weighted average of Omega’s equity picks in companies with a market capitalization of more than a billion dollars, and these 44 stocks signaled a 4.5% loss for the investment firm in the first quarter. In contrast, the S&P 500 Index gained almost 1% during this period. In this article we will take a closer look at the performance of Omega’s largest equity holdings heading into the first quarter, before the investor files its latest 13F filing, in which it will report the positions held as of the end of March.

Our research determined that following the small-cap stocks, that hedge funds are collectively bullish on, can help a smaller investor beat the S&P 500 by around 95 basis points per month (see more details here).

#5 AerCap Holdings N.V. (NYSE:AER)

– Shares Owned by Baupost Group (as of December 31): 5.60 Million

– Value of Holding (as of December 31): $241.69 Million

The share price of the $7.88 billion aircraft leasing company has lost around 6% since the beginning of 2016. However, the stock has been on the rise since mid-February and AerCap Holdings N.V. (NYSE:AER) announced a $400 million share repurchase program in April. Furthermore, the company purchased 6 aircraft, signed lease agreements for 100, and executed sale and part-out transactions for 25 aircraft during the first quarter. Activist investor David Einhorn‘s Greenlight Capital holds about 7.37 million shares of AerCap Holdings N.V. (NYSE:AER).

Follow Aercap Holdings N.v. (NYSE:AER)

#4 First Data Corp (NYSE:FDC)

– Shares Owned by Baupost Group (as of December 31): 15.42 Million

– Value of Holding (as of December 31): $242.04 Million

Omega’s newly initiated holding, in the largest IPO of 2015, has had a rough start this year as the share price of the New York-based provider of electronic commerce and payment solutions for merchants, financial institutions and card issuers has plummeted by 33% year-to-date. However, First Data Corp (NYSE:FDC) posted EPS of $0.24 on revenue of $2.80 billion for the first quarter, surpassed both top- and bottom-line estimates by a considerable margin, which prompted several analysts to raise their price targets on the stock. Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group holds about 6.16 million shares of First Data Corp (NYSE:FDC).

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