A Look At Billionaire Steve Cohen’s Top New Bets

You may like Steve Cohen or you may not like Steve Cohen but he is really one of the greatest hedge fund managers of all time. He had a stellar reputation till he got embroiled in an insider trading case. Though Steve Cohen had to shut down his hedge fund after paying a $1.8 billion fine, he has invested his own money in a family office – Point72 Asset Management. His family office has given strong returns since inception, keeping the reputation of Mr.Cohen as a great investor intact. Point72 Asset Management currently manages assets worth more than $14.2 billion. The fund bought positions in 262 new stocks during the third quarter, while making additional purchases in 180 stocks. The financial and consumer discretionary sectors are the top holdings of Steve’s fund. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) was the top buy for the fund during the quarter ending September, while it sold a large position in Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN). We look at some of the top positions of Points 72 Asset Management in the article below.

While there are many metrics that investors can assess in the investment process, hedge fund sentiment is something that is often overlooked. However, hedge funds and other institutional investors allocate significant resources while making their bets and their long-term focus makes them the perfect investors to emulate. This is supported by our research, which determined that following the small-cap stocks that hedge funds are collectively bullish on can help a smaller investor beat the S&P 500 by around 95 basis points per month (see more details here).

Point72 Asset Management bought 419,288 shares of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) worth more than $337 million during the third quarter. This made the stock its 3^rd largest holding, comprising 2.37% of the total portfolio value. Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) performance over the last year was flat. The company is a massive cash generating machine showing revenues of $46.5 billion and a net income of $9 billion. Analysts seem to agree with the bullish stance of Point72 Asset Management as 35 out of the 41 analysts covering this stock think it as a “buy”. The company is expected to show a full year EPS of $34.59 in 2016, which is up almost 20% from last year. The value of hedge fund holding in the stock also increased by 28% during the third quarter.