Conservative Stock Portfolio: 5 Best Stocks To Buy

4. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 131

Canaccord’s Michael Walkley has a Buy rating and a $205 price target on Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) shares as of August 4.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is a big tech company based in Cupertino, California. It manufactures smartphones, computers, tablets, wearables, and more.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) had 131 hedge funds long its stock in the first quarter, with a total stake value of $165.2 billion.

Here’s what Choice Equities Capital Management said about Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in its second-quarter 2023 investor letter:

“Dramatic valuation differences across market cap sizes continue. This has been the case for some time now. Perhaps I have spent too much time discussing these dichotomies, as generally, I feel like if we pick the right stocks and manage market exposures thoughtfully, our equities- oriented portfolio will prosper across various market cycles. However, when markets become as lopsided as they have lately, I feel additional discussion on the market environment is worthwhile, if only to help highlight the opportunities that are available and the likely path forward. I expect future discussions to soon be focused again on our moderately concentrated portfolio. But for now, let’s take one last in-depth look at how far reaching these valuation dichotomies have again become.(Please note: charts that accompany the following can be found in the Appendix.)

Take Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) for example. It is the largest stock by market cap, and fairly considered one of the best companies in the world. The company has been extraordinarily successful and improved standards of living everywhere in the process with their ubiquitous products. Along the way, shareholders have been richly rewarded, with shares increasing nearly fourteen-fold over the last ten years while generating an annualized total shareholder return of 31%, including dividends.

On the back of another big quarter for large cap tech, it is now the first stock to surpass the $3T market cap threshold. This makes its weighting in the ~$37T market cap of the S&P 500, ~8%. It also means this one stock’s market cap is larger than that of the entire ~$2.98T market cap of the Russell 2000 index, the first time in history a single stock has outweighed the Russell 2000 – aside from two brief days in September 2020 when Apple’s market cap then accomplished the same…” (Click here to read the full text)