Hedge Funds Have Bought Herbalife, Tempur-Pedic, and More

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While 13F filings provide the most complete picture of what stocks hedge funds own, they are somewhat out of date by the time they are released. This actually isn’t much of a disadvantage- we’ve actually found that despite the lag the most popular small cap stocks among hedge funds, as determined by 13Fs, produce an average excess return of 18 percentage points per year (learn more about our small cap strategy). Still, we do also follow more up-to-date 13D and 13G filings (though these only occur when a fund crosses the 5% ownership threshold or makes changes to such a position). Here are five stocks that hedge funds have bought recently:

Billionaire Carl Icahn has increased his holdings of Herbalife Ltd. (NYSE:HLF) to a total of 16.4 million shares. Icahn began buying Herbalife shortly after fellow billionaire Bill Ackman gave a public presentation explaining his own short position in the stock, and the two dueled on CNBC earlier this year. Find more stock picks from Carl Icahn and Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square. Ackman argued that Herbalife was a pyramid scheme, and the most recent data shows that 34% of the outstanding shares are held short. The stock is trading about where it was before Ackman made his short case.

ICAHN CAPITAL Carl IcahnAnn Inc (NYSE:ANN) had billionaire Steve Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors disclose ownership of 2.6 million shares of stock. This comes out to 5.3% of the total shares outstanding and is up from about 540,000 shares at the beginning of January (research more stocks SAC owned). The $1.5 billion market cap retailer of women’s apparel and accessories beat expectations for the fourth quarter of its fiscal year, with both top and bottom lines showing moderate growth compared to the same period in the previous fiscal year (although Ann did report negative comp sales). The trailing P/E is 15, which seems about in line with the growth rates Ann is experiencing.

See three more stocks hedge funds have been buying:

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