Billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller Squashed the Market in Q1 With These Top Picks

The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD) is another stock that had a lot of skeptical investors betting against it in the latter half of 2014. As with Target, those skeptics got knocked out by the home improvement retailer’s much improved results. In yet more parallels to Target, Druckenmiller increased his position in The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD) by a nearly equal amount, 138% to 529,100 shares, and the stock had nearly identical returns to Target’s during the first quarter, at 8.79%. Funds in our database were less skeptical about The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD) heading into 2015 however, with the top positions all being long, which included positions by billionaires Griffin and Ken Fisher.

Social media king Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), and Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA) rounded out some of Druckenmiller’s top picks, though with vastly different results. Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) continued its strong run of nearly two years now, with Druckenmiller’s new position of 430,000 shares seeing returns of 5.38% during the first quarter. It was a swing-and-miss for Druckenmiller onAlibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA)however, as his bullish move to increase his position in the company by over 2,400% during the fourth quarter to 253,900 shares backfired, as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA)shares fell by nearly 20% during the first quarter. The quantitative analysis fund D E Shaw, founded by billionaire D.E Shaw, was one fund that had the two stocks pegged, owning a large long position in Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) at the end of 2014, and a large position of put options underlying shares in Alibaba.

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