Apple Inc. (AAPL), Herbalife Ltd. (HLF) And Family Dollar Stores, Inc. (FDO): Billionaire Carl Icahn’s Top Picks

On the reflections of a billionaire investor, CNBC took an outlook of Carl Icahn who manages Icahn Capital Lp, an activist investor with interest in many high-performing companies that include Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL). He also has significant stakes in companies like Herbalife Ltd. (NYSE:HLF), Family Dollar Stores, Inc. (NYSE:FDO) and eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) among others.

Carl Icahn owns 7.54 million shares of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), worth $4.05 billion, he also owns 17.0 million shares of Herbalife Ltd. (NYSE:HLF) and 27.80 million shares of eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY), according to the latest 13F filing.

CNBC has also mentioned an old dispute between Icahn and Bill Ackman, who manages Pershing Square, another activist investor with whom he holds conflicting views of nutritional firm Herbalife Ltd. (NYSE:HLF). Mr. Icahn was also mentioned talking about his plans to help individual investors make right investment steps.

Of late, the investor has been locked in a dispute with Mr. Ackman about the right way to go in the nutritional firm Herbalife Ltd. (NYSE:HLF). While Ackman thinks of Herbalife as a flawed business that operates like a “ponzi scheme”, Mr. Icahn believes otherwise and has consistently defended the business even as various government agencies move in to investigate complaints against Herbalife.

On CNBC, Mr. Icahn remarked in reference to Mr. Ackman and his criticism of Herbalife Ltd. (NYSE:HLF) that, “the guy is a major loser.” He went on to say: “his criticisms are pretty much nonsense to begin with.”

Of his investment fights he said: “Maybe I do have a bit of a fighting gene.” He  added that he tries to get something accomplished and his legacy is to try and change the situation. Of course, that is to say that Mr. Icahn thinks his defense of Herbalife Ltd. (NYSE:HLF) is the right position.

Regarding Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), the billionaire investor observed, “I like Tim Cook. I think he is doing a good job. Tim is going in the right direction.” Having said that, Mr. Icahn went on to say that he hopes that some great new innovation is going to coming out Apple.

About helping individual investors make sound investment decisions, Mr. Icahn mentioned he was thinking very seriously about a new paradigm. He said that means something like going on Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) to provide individual investors with great investment research.

The investor has the largest stake in Family Dollar Stores, Inc. (NYSE:FDO) at 9.4 percent. He has been campaigning for the company to merge with Dollar General Corp. (NYSE:DG) to fend off competition.

Disclosure: none