3 Surprising Stocks That Billionaires We’re Buying Up for 2018

Investing legends like Warren Buffett, Carl Icahn, and Jim Simons became billionaires through decades of delivering outsized returns for their clients. Among the 663 hedge funds in our database that have filed 13Fs this year, about 60 of those are actively managed or were founded by billionaires.

We pay special attention to these legendary hedge funds, tracking their collective activity in addition to that of the entirety of the hedge funds that we monitor. In doing so, we can identify interesting trends among this group of talented investors, which could signal stocks that are poised for big things.

We found three such stocks when going over the latest hedge fund ownership data, each of which had a notable jump in ownership among billionaire funds during the final quarter of 2017. Those stocks are Caesars Entertainment Corp (NASDAQ:CZR), HD Supply Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:HDS), and Bunge Ltd (NYSE:BG). We’ll look at who was buying these stocks and what may have triggered that in this article.

At Insider Monkey, we track insider trading and hedge fund activity to uncover actionable patterns and profit from them. We track over 600 of the most successful hedge funds ever in our database and identify only their best stock picks. Our newest quarterly stock picks were released last month, which investors can gain access to by becoming a subscriber to Insider Monkey’s premium newsletters.

HD Supply Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:HDS)

Billionaire Managed or Founded Funds that Opened Positions in HDS: Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies (364,800 shares), Glenn Russell Dubin’s Highbridge Capital Management (313,576 shares), Julian Robertson’s Tiger Management (10,000 shares), Michael Platt and William Reeves’ Bluecrest Capital Mgmt. (96,340 shares), Paul Tudor Jones’ Tudor Investment Corp (46,470 shares)

How Much Money Billionaire Funds Have Invested in HDS: $1.34 billion

12 billionaire funds in our database owned shares of HD Supply Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:HDS) at the end of 2017, a jump from just seven three months earlier. Jim Simons’ quant fund opened the largest position, totaling 364,800 shares, while Highbridge Capital Management, which also enjoys a little quant action, bought over 300,000 shares as well.

HD Supply Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:HDS) Asset Sale Would Create Value: SunTrust Robinson Humphrey’s analyst Keith Hughes recently raised his price target on HD Supply to $48 from $42. Hughes asserted that a sum-of-the-parts analysis of the company’s business units showed that it deserves a higher valuation and noted that a spin-off of its construction and industrial unit could also close the valuation gap. HD Supply has explored selling some of its assets in the recent past, with sources saying early last year that private equity firms had shown interest in its Waterworks unit, which HD Supply was considering.

On the next page we’ll look at two other stocks that billionaire funds were scooping up in the final quarter of 2017.