Apple Inc. (AAPL): Billionaire Ken Fisher Just Gave The Stock a Giant Vote of Confidence

Billionaire Ken Fisher is an investment fund manager, not a hedge fund manager, and he chooses to disclose his 13F filings, which are used to track the equity holdings of prominent investors, earlier than his peers. 13F forms are very useful for investors, who like to use it as a way to find stock ideas for further research. According to a filing from April 8th, Fisher has rencently increased his stake in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) by 551,660 shares.

Owning at the end of 2012 a total of 949,124 shares, Fisher currently has 1,500,784 shares in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), according to a Form 13F filed by Fisher Asset Management’s Chief Compliance Officer, Tom Fishel to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Not so far ago, we have reported about hedge funds’ top consensus picks, where we mention that Apple, despite being the most popular stock among hedge funds for a very long time, according to the latest filings, hedge funds were dumping their top tech picks in favor of financials.

According to the 13F filings for the last quarter of 2012, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) had surrendered the first place as the most popular stock in favor of American International Group Inc (NYSE:AIG); 142 hedge funds held long positions in the insurer. Even though in the last three months of 2012, 132 of the funds we track were still long Apple, 26 stocks dumped the stock, while top-tier hedge fund managers like Dan Loeb or Stephen Mandel were cutting Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) entirely in the fourth quarter.

Fisher’s latest move into Apple, then, is a gargantuan development.

Ken Fisher is one of the 40 or so billionaires that we track in the MarketWatch Insider Monkey Billionaire Hedge Fund Index. Also, he has ranked in Forbes’s 400 richest Americans (252nd position in 2010 list).

In his 13F filing from the previous quarter, Fisher had reported holding about 33 million shares in Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO), 19 million shares in Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC), and 3.3 million shares in International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM). Also, in an article in Forbes (where Fisher works as a columnist), he said that his top stock pick for 2013 is Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE). The drug manufacturer is Fisher’s largest holding, where his fund has about 32 million shares.

For more Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) news, check out how analysts are trading the stock.

Disclosure: none