Brilliant Jim Chanos Betting On Watches (Of The Apple Variety) And Online Security With His Top Tech Stocks

Added to Chanos’ portfolio during the first quarter was Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:AKAM), in which he now holds a stake of 77,360 shares worth $4.50 million and representing 2.58% of his public equity portfolio. The cloud and security solutions company has increased by 15.6% on the NASDAQ year-to-date, but is down by 6.6% during the last month. Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ:AKAM) posted its earnings for the first quarter on April 28, and its $0.50 in earnings per share, were $0.01 short of what analysts had expected. Two weeks ago, Akamai Technologies revealed that it had formed a strategic alliance together with Chicago-based private company Trustwave, an alliance that will strive to improve incident response and vulnerability assessment. Another hedgie that took a stake in Akamai Technologies was Duquesne Capital led by Stanley Druckenmiller. 355,300 shares with a value of $25.24 million were purchased during the first quarter by the billionaire.

A new stake was also taken by Chanos in Fortinet Inc (NASDAQ:FTNT) during the first quarter, consisting of 156,862 shares with a value of $5.48 million. California-based Fortinet, which was founded in 2000 by brothers Ken and Michael Xie, has been having an exceptional performance on the stock market alongside the impressive returns of the online security industry as a whole, having gained 39.9% year-to-date and 81.6% during the last year. The network and computer security company posted its earnings for the first quarter on April 20, with earnings per share of $0.01. Despite the low earnings, which missed analysts’ expectations by $0.01, Fortinet Inc (NASDAQ:FTNT) impressed the market with its strong revenue growth of 26%. Furthermore, the fact that Fortinet Inc (NASDAQ:FTNT) carry’s almost no debt indicates that the financial position of the company is more than strong. The only cloud in the Fortinet sky, at least in terms of its stock, might be those big gains over the last year, which have raised concerns that there is little room for growth left in the stock at this point in time. Jerome Debs‘ Bodri Capital Management seemingly does not feel the same, as it increased its stake in the company by 25% to 250,000 shares with a value of $8.74 million during the first quarter.

Disclosure: None