In this article, we take a look at the best stocks to buy according to billionaire hedge fund managers.
July was a rocky month for multistrategy hedge funds, even though the stock market went up a bit. Ken Griffin’s Citadel handled the ups and downs fairly well. People close to the firm disclosed that Citadel’s Wellington fund gained 1.3% in July, bringing its total gain for the year to 4% after rare losses in February and March.
However, managers with big quant teams were fighting an uphill battle in July. Some systematic strategies lost ground for weeks, though a Morgan Stanley note indicated that quants recovered about 30% of their losses by the end of the month. Multistrategy funds can often handle difficult markets better than pure quant funds like Renaissance or Qube, and the credit goes to their diversification efforts. For example, Schonfeld’s $14 billion flagship fund, known for its quant teams, fell only 0.3% last month, while its fundamental equity fund climbed 1.4%, balancing losses in other segments.
The first half of 2025 has been challenging for investors, but hedge funds have held up well. Aberdeen Investments noted that the global hedge fund index was up 2.1% year-to-date through May, outpacing many traditional investments. Equity long/short strategies, especially market-neutral ones, performed well as market uncertainty weaved a path for returns.
This performance comes from mindful decision-making. As market waves tend to shift investor sentiment rapidly, hedge fund managers have remained flexible, reducing exposure, using tactical hedges, and focusing on sectors like energy and Asia-Pacific equities, which are still strong despite global uncertainty.
Consequently, the latest reports indicate that more than 60% of investors plan to increase hedge fund allocations this year, likely because hedge funds returned 10.12% in 2024 with lower volatility than global stocks, and strong performance continues to set them apart.
In this article, we will take a look at the best stocks to buy according to billionaire hedge fund managers.
Ken Griffin of Citadel Investment Group
Our Methodology
For this article, we manually reviewed billionaire hedge fund portfolios to spot stocks that ranked among their top 10 holdings in Q2 2025. These 10 stocks have also drawn recent coverage from Wall Street analysts and mainstream media.
Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).
10. Smurfit Westrock Plc (NYSE:SW)
Billionaire: George Soros
Billionaire’s Stake Value: $322,787,329
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 42
Smurfit Westrock Plc (NYSE:SW) is placed 10th on our list of the best stocks to buy. The company recorded a net loss of $26 million in Q2 2025, compared to $132 million in the same quarter last year, as restructuring costs tempered its results. Smurfit reported quarterly net sales of $7.94 billion and an adjusted EBITDA of $1.21 billion, with a margin of 15.3%, compared to 16.2% in the same period last year.
SW commented that its quarterly net loss was primarily due to $280 million in costs from earlier announced closures and restructuring moves. Without these charges, Smurfit Westrock’s results matched its adjusted EBITDA guidance.
Tony Smurfit, the company President and CEO, mentioned:
“I am pleased to report a strong second-quarter performance. This performance is driven by the significant improvement in our North American business and continued excellent results from our Latin American operations, somewhat offset by a resilient performance from our EMEA and APAC businesses.”
The North American segment announced an adjusted EBITDA of $752 million with a 15.8% margin, which management credited to stronger operations and benefits from the merger between Smurfit Kappa Group and WestRock last year.
For the next quarter, the company expects adjusted EBITDA of about $1.3 billion and keeps its full-year forecast between $5 billion and $5.2 billion, assuming current market conditions remain the same.
Smurfit Westrock Plc (NYSE:SW) manufactures and distributes paper-based packaging products worldwide, such as container board, corrugated containers, consumer packaging, recycled packaging, and packaging machinery.
