Hedge Funds Lost $52 Billion On These 25 Stocks

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Valeant Pharmaceuticals International (NYSE:VRX) made financial journalists’ day when it cratered following short seller Citron’s hyperbolic report. Bill Ackman isn’t the most modest fund manager in the world, yet it’s a shame to see the joy in the media when reporting Ackman’s nearly $2 billion loss. Hedge funds collectively made more than $3.8 billion in Amazon since the end of the second quarter, yet we haven’t seen a single article about this fact. By the way, Amazon (AMZN) returned 38% since the end of the second quarter but billionaires Halvorsen, Cohen, Fisher and other managers probably got “lucky” when they invested more than $10 billion in the company. We also haven’t seen any reports about hedge funds’ $5.7 billion profit in Alphabet Inc (GOOG). I guess it isn’t news when a dog bites a man but it is big news when hedge funds lost billions. So, we have news for you.

In this article we will share the list of 25 stocks that did the most damage to hedge fund portfolios since the end of the second quarter. This list is ideal for journalists who’d like to cherry pick hedge fund bets that failed spectacularly. Collectively hedge funds lost $52 billion by betting on these 25 stocks. In order to create this list we considered only those stocks that were owned by at least 50 hedge funds and that lost at least 10% since the end of June. Each of these companies costed hedge funds at least $850 million. Below we listed the names of the hedge funds/billionaire investors who were among the top 5 holders of each stock in our database. More interestingly we created another “hedge fund misery ranking” listing the hedge funds that appeared the most among the top holders of each of these stocks. One hedge fund manager had very large positions in 9 of these 25 stocks. Click here to find out this billionaire investor’s name. Here is our countdown:

25. Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS)

Total Hedge Fund Loses: $855 million

Total Value of Hedge Fund Positions: $7.3 billion

Return: -11.8%

Biggest Hedge Fund Holders: Warren Buffett, Lansdowne Partners, Greenhaven Associates, Boykin Curry, Richard Pzena

24. CBS Corporation (NYSE:CBS)

Total Hedge Fund Losses: $947 million

Total Value of Hedge Fund Positions: $4.3 billion

Return: -21.9%

Biggest Hedge Fund Holders: Highfields Capital, Soroban Capital, billionaire Larry Robbins, Chieftain Capital, Brahman Capital

23. Whiting Petroleum Corporation (NYSE:WLL)

Total Hedge Fund Losses: $961 million

Total Value of Hedge Fund Positions: $2.2 billion

Return: -44.2%

Biggest Hedge Fund Holders: Billionaire John Paulson, billionaire Ken Griffin, billionaire Andreas Halvorsen, Balyasny Asset Management, Point State Capital.

By the way, Point State Capital’s Zach Schreiber successfully predicted the decline in oil prices a year and a half ago at the Ira Sohn Conference. If there are journalists who’d like to pen a sarcastic article about Schreiber, this is your chance.

Follow Whiting Petroleum Corp (NYSE:WLL)

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