Jim Simons and Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund’s 30 Largest Holdings

Jim Simons’ Medallion Fund is a phenomenon, by far the best hedge fund with 34% annual alpha. The problem is its strategy has a size constraint. So Jim Simons has had to return outsiders’ capital. Jim Simons is making at least a couple of billions of dollars every year from his investments in the Medallion Fund. In 2005, Simons launched Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund (RIEF) for outside investors with the goal of managing tens of billions of dollars. The fund was said to have a theoretical capacity of $100 Billion. It was expected to beat the S&P 500 index by 4 to 6 percentage points per year on the average. Through September 2007, RIEF had an annualized return of 12.8% and $28 Billion under management. In 2008, RIEF lost 16% followed by a 6% loss in 2009. RIEF’s return was in line with S&P 500 in 2010, returning 16.5%.

RENAISSANCE TECHNOLOGIES

Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies has more than 2700 securities. Insider Monkey, your source for free insider trading data, compiled Rentec’s top 30 stock holdings. All of these stock holdings are larger than $100 Million and most of them were also among the largest stock holdings in Rentec’s portfolio at the end of the previous quarter. Here are Jim Simons’ top 30 stock holdings:

Company Ticker Return Value (in Millions)
APPLE INC AAPL 10.6% 438
LORILLARD INC LO -4.7% 360
JOHNSON & JOHNSON JNJ -1.9% 342
DIRECTV DTV 8.9% 184
BOEING CO BA 11.2% 169
SALESFORCE COM INC CRM 7.2% 163
GOOGLE INC GOOG 5.1% 161
ABBOTT LABS ABT -4.0% 160
TEVA PHARMACEUTICAL INDS LTD TEVA -1.7% 156
NOVO-NORDISK A S NVO 5.5% 156
COCA COLA CO KO -3.3% 148
COLGATE PALMOLIVE CO CL -1.1% 145
ALCON INC ACL 0.4% 145
HUMANA INC HUM 6.5% 137
CHIPOTLE MEXICAN GRILL INC CMG 26.4% 133
HEWLETT PACKARD CO HPQ 15.5% 129
ALTERA CORP ALTR 16.5% 125
MCDONALDS CORP MCD -0.8% 125
INTEL CORP INTC 4.4% 123
PEPSICO INC PEP -2.2% 120
FAMILY DLR STORES INC FDO -11.2% 118
CF INDS HLDGS INC CF 11.3% 117
VERISIGN INC VRSN 12.4% 108
LOCKHEED MARTIN CORP LMT 16.9% 108
PHILIPPINE LONG DISTANCE TEL PHI -6.8% 107
PRUDENTIAL FINL INC PRU 11.0% 102
GILEAD SCIENCES INC GILD 5.9% 102
NEWMONT MINING CORP NEM -7.4% 102
POTASH CORP SASK INC POT 21.7% 100
FRANKLIN RES INC BEN 15.6% 100

Jim Simons’ top 30 holdings returned 4.9% since the end of December, underperforming the SPY by 1 percentage point. Jim Simons’ largest holdings seem to underdeliver in 2011 as well. Their best performing positions are among other hedge fund managers’ favorite holdings.

Apple (AAPL) is in the portfolios of Daniel Loeb’s Third Point, Zweig-DiMenna, Chase Coleman’s Tiger Global, Stephen Mandel’s Lone Pine Capital, Barry Rosenstein’s Jana Partners, Craig Effron and Curtis Schenker’s Scoggin, and David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital.

Potash Corp became a hedge fund favorite. Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global, Perry Capital, Mohnish Pabrai are among the hedge funds that own Potash.

It’s a secret that Renaissance Tech uses momentum strategies in the Medallion Fund. It seems like they are employing momentum strategies in their longer term holdings too. Salesforce (CRM), Chipotle (CMG), and Altera are high momentum stocks. Altera is also among one of the stocks Wall Street Analysts expect to dive the most.