Billionaire Ken Griffin’s Citadel’s Long Term Picks Include Apple Inc. (AAPL)

In May, billionaire Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group filed its 13F for the first quarter of 2013 with the SEC, disclosing many of its long equity positions as of the end of March. Obviously this information is a bit old by now, but in addition to tracking quarterly 13F filings for the purpose of helping develop investment strategies (for example, we’ve found that the most popular small cap stocks among hedge funds outperform the S&P 500 by an average of 18 percentage points per year) we can also follow Citadel’s stock picks over time. Chances are that if Griffin and his team have owned a stock for the last two years and it was a large position at the end of Q1, they still own a good deal of it today and it is worth looking at this screen of names for interesting ideas. Read on for our quick take on the five largest holdings from Citadel’s most recent 13F which the fund owned at least $100 million of at the end of March 2011 or see the full list of stock picks over time.

Griffin reported a position of 6.7 million shares in Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C) in the filing for Q1 2013. The megabank has roughly doubled from its levels a year ago, yet is still valued at a discount to the book value of its equity with a P/B ratio of 0.8. Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C) has reported its results for the second quarter of the year, with earnings up slightly on a q/q basis and more than 20% higher than their levels a year earlier. Appaloosa Management, which is managed by billionaire David Tepper, had 8.5 million shares in its portfolio according to that fund’s own 13F (find Tepper’s stock picks).

Citadel owned about 640,000 shares of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) as of the beginning of April, though we’d note that it also had large positions in the stock’s call and put options. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) had been the most popular stock among hedge funds in the first quarter of the year (check out the full top ten list), regaining the #1 slot from AIG. It is valued at 10 times earnings, whether we compare the stock price to trailing results or to analyst estimates for the forward fiscal year. Of course Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s market cap includes a good deal of cash, and management has been moving towards returning more of this cash to shareholders.