Boykin Curry is Extremely Bullish On $GS $AON $AXP

Boykin Curry is extremely bullish on Goldman Sachs (GS) and AON Corp (AON). Boykin Curry isn’t one of the well-known hedge fund managers despite beating the S&P 500 index by 6 percentage points annually for more than 20 years. In 2010 Eagle Capital returned 21% and beat the S&P 500 index by also 6 percentage points. This is not the first time Boykin Curry presented at the Value Investing Congress. Three years ago he recommended American Express (AXP) when the stock was trading at $20 per share. Was that a bad recommendation? In the short term it was a bad recommendation because the stock went down to $12 in February 2009. Fortunately today AXP is trading above $45.

His investment thesis is pretty simple. Look beyond the short-term where everybody is focused on. Currently financial stocks are trading at depressed levels because of the increased regulations and European debt crisis related concerns. Boykin Curry thinks Goldman Sachs and AON will be worth much more over the next 2-3 years. Curry believes Goldman Sachs will be trading above $150 per share. Previously we took a look at Boykin Curry and Eagle Capital’s portfolio. Goldman Sachs wasn’t in his portfolio during the first quarter. Unfortunately he initiated a $186 million position in GS during the second quarter when the stock was trading above $130 per share. This means Boykin Curry lost more than 30% from that early investment. He probably bought more shares as the stock price declined and now Goldman Sachs is his first or second “best idea”.

Of course we know that he doesn’t have a spectacular short-term track record. His American Express recommendation lost 40% in 4 months. In the end the stock returned more than 100% though. So, this may be a great time to imitate his GS bet.

Boykin Curry’s probably best investment idea is AON. The stock has a free cash flow yield of 10%. This was his second largest holding at the end of March. He increased his holdings by 14% during the second quarter. He had more than $500 million in AON at the end of June and it was his largest position (check out Boykin Curry and Eagle Capital‘s entire portfolio).

Boykin Curry is extremely bullish about GS and AON. You should at least take a closer look at these two stocks Boykin Curry recommends.