Billionaire Ken Fisher is one of the 800+ fund managers actively tracked by Insider Monkey. A few months ago we asked the question whether Ken Fisher is a “legendary investor or a marketing genius”. One thing is certain that Ken Fisher isn’t an investor who tries to time the market. As the stocks fell all over the world during the first quarter, Ken Fisher’s 13F portfolio also fell from $99 billion to $80 billion. We assume that most of this decline was due to the losses in stock prices rather than investor redemptions.
Wall Street analysts and investors don’t respect Ken Fisher much. We have never heard of Ken Fisher’s stock pitches move stocks the way Bill Ackman or David Tepper moves the markets. Nevertheless Ken Fisher has been able to deliver decent returns to grow his fund’s AUM to nearly $100 billion. That’s nothing to sneeze at.
Ken Fisher of Fisher Asset Management
In this article we are going to take a look at Ken Fisher’s top 5 stock picks. During the first quarter Ken Fisher’s top 5 stock picks delivered an average loss of only 6%, vs. a loss of nearly 20% for the S&P 500 Index. That return was even better than the average return of top 5 hedge fund stocks which lost an average of 6.9% during the first quarter. As you can guess top hedge fund stock picks is a very fertile area to look for good stocks to beat the market.
Insider Monkey leaves no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, this investor can predict short term winners following earnings announcements with 77% accuracy, so we check out his stock picks. A former hedge fund manager is pitching the “next Amazon” in this video; again we are listening. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. Our best call in 2020 was shorting the market when S&P 500 was trading at 3150 after realizing the coronavirus pandemic’s significance before most investors. Insider Monkey’s monthly newsletter beat the S&P 500 Index by 44 percentage points over the last 3 years.
Keeping this in mind, let’s now take a look at Ken Fisher’s top 5 stock picks at the end of March.
The fifth largest position in billionaire Ken Fisher’s 13F portfolio was Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE:BABA). Ken Fisher had nearly $2.6 billion invested in the Chinese giant. Alibaba Group Holding was also the fourth most popular stock among all hedge funds at the end of December. We believe Alibaba shares can reach $400 over the next 3-5 years.
The fourth largest position in Fisher’s portfolio was Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN). Fisher had nearly $3.2 billion invested in Amazon.com Inc shares at the end of March. Amazon shares delivered total gains of 22% since then, potentially giving Fisher total gains of more than $650 million. Legendary investor Bill Miller doesn’t think Amazon.com is a good stock to be invested in after its strong 2020 gains. In the following video you can watch why Bill Miller thinks it doesn’t make sense today to invest in Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) and 6 other recession stocks that performed well so far this year.
Bill Miller’s hedge fund returned 120% in 2019. So, investors shouldn’t hastily dismiss his point.
The third biggest position in Ken Fisher’s portfolio at the end of March was Visa Inc. (NYSE:V), valued at $3.3 billion. Visa Inc. was the worst performing top 5 stock in Ken Fisher’s portfolio in Q1, losing 14.1%. However, Visa shares recovered most of their Q1 losses so far in the second quarter. Visa has been a hedge fund favorite for a long time but it really never got too cheap for us to recommend it to our subscribers.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) was the second biggest position in Fisher’s 13F portfolio. Fisher had $3.4 billion invested in Microsoft Corporation at the end of March and those shares are worth 17% more today. Microsoft Corporation is one of the most valuable companies in the world today, so it isn’t a surprise for us to see this stock near the top of Fisher’s portfolio.
Finally, Ken Fisher’s #1 choice in this coronavirus recession is Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL). Fisher had nearly $3.6 billion invested in this $1.34 trillion company. Apple Inc. shares returned 22.3% so far in the second quarter, even better than the 22% gains delivered by Amazon.com Inc. Most investors consider Apple an easy stock pick, but it isn’t so. World’s most bearish hedge fund hated Apple in January and we published an article about that. That hedge fund was wrong about Apple and it was also wrong about its long stock picks. This is probably how billionaire Ken Fisher managed to become a billionaire: by identifying winners and staying invested during tough times.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
