In this piece, we will take a look at the top fifteen stocks in billionaire Ken Griffin’s 2023 portfolio. For more stocks, head on over to Billionaire Ken Griffin’s 2023 Portfolio: Top 5 Stock Picks.
The stock market crash of 2022 hammered several major hedge funds. One of the biggest funds that bled capital last year is Chase Coleman and Feroze Dewan’s Tiger Global. According to Insider Monkey’s research, the hedge fund’s portfolio as of the first quarter of 2023 was worth a respectable $10.9 billion. Sounds respectable right? After all, it’s more money than most of us will likely ever see in our lifetimes (never say never?). Well, you won’t think it’s a lot of money when you consider the same hedge fund’s portfolio by the end of 2022’s first quarter. Back then, the portfolio was worth a whopping $26.6 billion, implying that in just a year, Tiger Global’s portfolio has been cut by more than half.
Another star that crashed last year was Catherine Wood’s Ark Investment. Ark is known for obsessing over high growth technology companies, and these are precisely the ones that didn’t see any love from the stock market last year. And the turbulence in these areas has also hammered Ark’s portfolio. This portfolio, which was worth $23.9 billion by the end of Q1 2022 is currently worth $14.5 billion. Cumulatively speaking, data from LCH Investments – called the fund of funds – shows that the industry lost $208 billion last year and nearly one tenth of this was simply due to Tiger Global.
However, not all funds were losers in 2022. The best performing hedge fund during the year was Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investments. Citadel made $16 billion last year, nearly twice what the second best performing hedge fund D.E. Shaw Group made. So, undoubtedly, Citadel is the king of the hedge fund world right now. This strong performance made Citadel’s founder and owner Mr. Ken Griffin not only one of the richest hedge fund managers in the world but also one of the richest people on the planet. Data from Forbes Magazine shows that Mr. Griffin’s current net worth sits at a cool $32.3 billion – making him one of the fifty richest folks all around. Quite an achievement, we’d say, and one that becomes even more impressive when you consider the history of his fortunes. This is due to the fact that as recently as 2020, the billionaire’s net worth stood at $12 billion. Looking at this, it would appear as if while the world is up in flames, Mr. Griffin knows how to hold his ground and do what he’s best at doing i.e. making cold, hard cash.
The billionaire is an alumnus of Harvard University, and he has been investing since his time at college. He set up Citadel just a year after graduating from university, and would soon go on to make high double digit returns. So naturally, his perspective on how to deal with losses and navigate through adversity is nothing less of a goldmine. Well, lucky for us, Mr. Griffin offered some gems during a fireside chat at the Yale School of Management in April 2023, where he shared:
Well there’s a little saying, a little quip that I like to make. History is written by the winners. Right. So the wonderful history of Citadel is how we’re the most profitable hedge fund of all time. The chapter of how we were on the verge of going business in ’08 is now like a footnote in that book. All right. That’s a very important note. It is now all been an easy march to success. It’s had, you know, I think have the interesting position in life I probably lost, my team has probably lost more money that perhaps any other firm in existence. We just happened to have made more money [LAUGHS] than almost any other firm in existence. And it’s the net that everyone talks about. I mean there’s years when our lost are. . are. . .hundreds of billions of dollars, I don’t know if it’s hundreds, it’s over a hundred, maybe hundreds. It’s numbers are incomprehensible, right. So, number is all my losses are my tuition, I have the most expensive education in American history. And a number of my colleagues have education that are becoming competitively – expensive.
And I think it’s very important, that like, we, in some sense you have have to have a moment of levity, okay? If every time you lost money, you got depressed and angry and you couldn’t deal with it, you’d just have a very short career. you’d just have a very short career. So you need to be able to take a step back and go, ‘it’s a tuition bill I paid.’ And it doesn’t mean that you don’t think very long and hard about what went wrong. But you have to keep it in perspective.
In ’08 that tuition bill almost became getting expelled from school. Because we were, we lost half of our equity in sixteen weeks, in a firm that had never had a double digit draw down in twenty years. The only reason we survived, and there’s a number of reason, but the principle reason we survived is when long term capital failed 1998, I went and met with a number of senior people that worked at Long Term Capital. Why did I do this? What was my agenda? I wanted to understand how does a firm that loses 90% of its equity in a levered financial services industry, still stay in business? Like if you ask me that’s one of the greatest accomplishments of all time, was that they lost 90% of their equity before they lost control of their business in a financial services, in a levered financial services company. And much of what we learned from how they survived that was actually fundamentally existentially important to our ability to withstand the turmoil of 2008. So there’s a very important lesson here, which is not only due to want to learn from your mistakes, you would want to learn from other people’s mistakes. They’re much cheaper tuition bills.
Learning from others is central to Mr. Griffin’s philosophy. But what if you could learn from him? That’s what we will do in this article. Let’s take a look at some of Ken Griffin’s favorite stocks, out of which some notable ones are Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE), NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA), and Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META).
Ken Griffin of Citadel Investment Group
Our Methodology
To determine which stocks are on Ken Griffin and Citadel Investments’ radar, we took a look at the hedge fund’s filings for the first quarter of 2023. Out of these, the call options, put options, and investments in exchange traded funds have been omitted and the resulting top fifteen stocks are listed below. Finally, one thing to keep in mind when reading this list is that Mr. Griffin has increased his stakes in most of these companies by hundreds of percent, indicating that he continues to be bullish on most of these stocks.
Billionaire Ken Griffin’s 2023 Portfolio: Top 15 Stock Picks
15. ResMed Inc. (NYSE:RMD)
Citadel Investments’ Q1 2023 Stake: $460 million
ResMed Inc. (NYSE:RMD) is a medical instruments company headquartered in San Diego, California. The firm makes and sells a variety of products such as diagnostics devices and dental equipment.
By the end of last year’s fourth quarter, 34 of the 943 hedge funds part of Insider Monkey’s database had held a stake in ResMed Inc. (NYSE:RMD). The firm’s largest hedge fund investor after Citadel as of March 2023 is Brandon Haley’s Holocene Advisors with a $142 million stake.
NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA), Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE), and Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) are met by ResMed Inc. (NYSE:RMD) in the list of Ken Griffin’s top 2023 investments.
14. Walmart Inc. (NYSE:WMT)
Citadel Investments’ Q1 2023 Stake: $463 million
Walmart Inc. (NYSE:WMT) is one of the world’s largest retailers in terms of both its stores and the number of employees. The firm is based in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Insider Monkey took a look at 943 hedge fund portfolios for last year’s December quarter and discovered that 66 had invested in Walmart Inc. (NYSE:WMT). Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management is its largest investor through a $1.2 billion investment.
13. FedEx Corporation (NYSE:FDX)
Citadel Investments’ Q1 2023 Stake: $467 million
FedEx Corporation (NYSE:FDX) is a courier and logistics and transportation company. The firm has tens of thousands of vehicles and hundreds of service centers in its portfolio.
48 of the 943 hedge funds part of Insider Monkey’s database had bought FedEx Corporation (NYSE:FDX)’s shares. The firm’s second largest investor in Q1 2023 is since it owns Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke, and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital shares that are worth $454 million.
12. DexCom, Inc. (NASDAQ:DXCM)
Citadel Investments’ Q1 2023 Stake: $469 million
DexCom, Inc. (NASDAQ:DXCM) is another medical devices company that is also based in San Diego, California. The firm makes and sells glucose monitoring systems.
As of December 2022, 70 of the 943 hedge funds profiled by Insider Monkey had invested in the firm. DexCom, Inc. (NASDAQ:DXCM)’s largest shareholder after Citadel is Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP with a $343 million stake.
11. Humana Inc. (NYSE:HUM)
Citadel Investments’ Q1 2023 Stake: $494 million
Humana Inc. (NYSE:HUM) is a healthcare plan provider. It provides supplemental benefit plans, healthcare plans, and insurance products among other services.
After digging through 943 hedge funds for their fourth quarter of 2022 investments, Insider Monkey found out that 67 had held a stake in Humana Inc. (NYSE:HUM). The firm’s largest investor in Q1 2023 was Rajiv Jain’s GQG Partners with a $1 billion investment.
10. Visa Inc. (NYSE:V)
Citadel Investments’ Q1 2023 Stake: $507 million
Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) is a financial services firm headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides payment cards, data analytics products, and other services.
Insider Monkey’s December quarter of 2022 study of 943 hedge fund portfolios discovered 177 investors in the firm. Visa Inc. (NYSE:V)’s largest shareholder is Chris Hohn’s TCI Fund Management through a massive $4.3 billion stake.
9. The Cigna Group (NYSE:CI)
Citadel Investments’ Q1 2023 Stake: $507 million
The Cigna Group (NYSE:CI) is a healthcare plan provider based in Bloomfield, Connecticut. It provides healthcare plans, insurance coverage, and other products.
76 of the 943 hedge funds profiled by Insider Monkey had bought The Cigna Group (NYSE:CI)’s shares as of last year’s final quarter. As of March 2023, Larry Robbins’s Glenview Capital is its largest investor after Citadel since it owns 1.8 million shares that are worth $472 million.
8. Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC)
Citadel Investments’ Q1 2023 Stake: $561 million
Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) is the largest chip manufacturer in the world. The firm is based in Santa Clara, California.
After scouring through 943 hedge funds for last year’s fourth quarter, Insider Monkey found out that 62 had bought a stake in the firm. Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC)’s largest hedge fund shareholder is Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke, and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital with a $700 million stake.
7. Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:PANW)
Citadel Investments’ Q1 2023 Stake: $591 million
Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:PANW) is a cybersecurity firm that provides firewalls, threat protection, malware, and other products. It is headquartered in Santa Clara, California.
85 of the 943 hedge funds part of Insider Monkey’s December 2022 database had invested in Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:PANW). In the next quarter, Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:PANW)’s second largest investor was David Blood and Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management with a $517 million investment.
6. AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T)
Citadel Investments’ Q1 2023 Stake: $631 million
AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) is a telecommunications service provider that offers internet and cellular coverage among other products. It operates out of Dallas, Texas.
After looking at 943 hedge fund shareholdings, Insider Monkey was able to sift out 55 investors in the firm in Q4 2022. AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T)’s second largest hedge fund investor is Israel Englander’s Millennium Management with a $374 million stake.
Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE), AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T), NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA), and Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) are some of billionaire Ken Griffin’s top stocks for 2023.
Click to continue reading and see Billionaire Ken Griffin’s 2023 Portfolio: Top 5 Stock Picks.
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Disclosure: None. Billionaire Ken Griffin’s 2023 Portfolio: Top 15 Stock Picks is originally published on Insider Monkey.
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