5 Hedge Funds that Profited from Reddit’s Meme Stock Craze

2. Blackrock Group Ltd

Estimated Gain From Meme Stock Craze: $2.4 Billion

Blackrock Group Ltd is placed second on our list of 10 hedge funds that profited from Reddit’s meme stock craze. The fund is based in London and has a portfolio value of over $210 billion. The fund concentrates on investments in the finance, healthcare, and technology markets. Regulatory filings showed at the end of last year that Blackrock owned 9.3 million shares in GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME) worth around $173 million. As the video game retailer went on a record rally that saw share price rise by 700% in the next few weeks, this stake became worth over $2.5 billion. News agency Reuters reports that the fund made $2.4 billion in the process.

A top holding of Blackrock Group Ltd is Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), a technology company based in California. At the end of the first quarter of 2021, 127 hedge funds in the database of Insider Monkey held stakes worth $130 billion in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), down from 146 in the preceding quarter worth $142 billion.

In its Q1 2021 investor letter, Distillate Capital, an asset management firm, highlighted a few stocks and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) was one of them. Here is what the fund said:

“Apple is an even more notable situation and one that highlights our free cash valuation methodology and bears further discussion given its Q3 ‘20 sale from our strategy. For an extended period, Apple was extraordinarily inexpensive on a free cash flow basis and was the largest position in our strategy, exceeding 5% of the portfolio.”