Cliff Asness’ Short Position on AMC and His Top 5 Picks

4. Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 271     

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is a diversified technology firm with core interests in ecommerce. Securities filings show that AQR Capital Management owned over 234,000 shares of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) at the end of March 2022 worth $763 million, representing 1,44% of the portfolio. AQR has steadily reduced its stake in the firm since the second quarter of 2020, shedding the stock in all four quarters of 2021 as well. 

On June 24, Evercore ISI analyst Mark Mahaney maintained an Outperform rating on Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) stock and lowered the price target to $180 from $205, noting that retail spending was expected to be lower over the next year. 

Among the hedge funds being tracked by Insider Monkey, London-based investment firm Citadel Investment Group is a leading shareholder in Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) with 4 million shares worth more than $13 billion. 

In its Q4 2021 investor letter, Mercator International, an asset management firm, highlighted a few stocks and Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) was one of them. Here is what the fund said: 

“Transformative technologies often generate euphoria. People are excited by the big new thing that is changing the world. We saw this pattern with the boom of westward canal transportation at the dawn of the nineteenth century. Railway stocks similarly attracted large numbers of eager investors a few decades later. Then came the electrification of America, the telephone, and the automobile industry, to name just a few transformative technologies.

The initial euphoric phase always ends with a reality check. Valuations come back to earth. At the end of the cycle, only a few companies remain standing. A shakeout has a way of clarifying the field of opportunities.

For example, readers may recall that when the internet bubble burst two decades ago, Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) stock suffered greatly but pet.com was gone. For those investors who had stayed on the sidelines, this was an excellent time to buy Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN). The company’s business model had shown its merits and competition was rapidly shrinking. The stock price was now also much more attractive.”