Billionaire Ken Griffin’s Top Stock Picks

#3 Lowe’s Companies Inc. (NYSE:LOW)

-Shares Owned by Citadel LLC (as of December 31): 5.54 Million

-Value of Citadel LLC’s Holding (as of December 31): $421.27 Million

Citadel owned 956,395 shares of Lowe’s Companies Inc. (NYSE:LOW) on September 30, but the fund boosted its stake in the company by 4.58 million shares during the final quarter of 2015. This bullish move has turned out to be a bad investment so far, considering that the stock has lost almost 15% since the beginning of the year. But we all known that equity investing is a marathon, not a sprint, so it’s too early to call this bet a failure. Earlier this month, Lowe’s Companies announced an agreement to purchase Canadadian home improvement retailer Rona for approximately $2.28 billion. The soon-to-be combined company will represent the leading home improvement retailer in Canada, thus strengthening the acquirer’s competitive edge against Home Depot Inc. (NYSE:HD) in the $32 billion home improvement market. Lowe’s Companies currently has only 42 Canadian stores, while its main competitor has more than 180 stores. Meanwhile, the company has a forward P/E multiple of 16.37, which is below the 18.86 forward P/E of Home Depot and below the average of 18.8 for the home improvement industry. Iridian Asset Management, founded by David Cohen and Harold Levy, cut its stake in Lowe’s Companies Inc. (NYSE:LOW) by 537,719 shares during the last quarter of 2015 to 7.15 million shares.

#2 Honeywell International Inc. (NYSE:HON)

-Shares Owned by Citadel LLC (as of December 31): 4.53 Million

-Value of Citadel LLC’s Holding (as of December 31): $469.01 Million

Ken Griffin’s fund boosted its Honeywell International Inc. (NYSE:HON) stake by 3.92 million shares during the fourth quarter of 2015. The shares of the diversified technology and manufacturing company are flat over the past one-year period, so what propelled Citadel’s bullishness on the company during the recent quarter? It is highly likely that the company’s attractive dividend yield of 2.34% was among the factors Griffin and his team considered when lifting the stake in the industrial giant. Honeywell pays out an annualized dividend of $2.38 per share, while its dividend payments can be considered quite safe given the company’s convincing bottom-line growth last year. Although Honeywell’s net sales for full-year 2015 decrease 4% year-on-year to $38.58 billion, its net earnings per share grew to $6.04 from $5.33. Moreover, the stock trades at a rather inexpensive forward P/E multiple of 14.27, which is slightly below the average of 14.8 for the industrial machinery industry. It should also be mentioned that Standard and Poor’s, Fitch, and Moody’s have ratings of A, A, and A2 on the company’s long-term debt, so Honeywell is in great financial shape as well. Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies LLC added a 767,800-share position in Honeywell International Inc. (NYSE:HON) to its portfolio during the fourth quarter.