George Soros And Steve Cohen: Two Tech Stocks They Like And One They Got Rid Of

Moving on, it seems both Soros and Cohen had differing immediate outlooks on eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) [pre Paypal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:PYPL) spin-off] as well. Whereas Point72 increased its stake in the company by 1,364% to 758,200 shares, Soros Fund Management reduced its stake marginally, by 4% to slightly under 3.2 million shares during that period. Shares of eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) remained range-bound throughout the first half of the year, but were up by 4.4% for the second quarter. On September 10, Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Youssef Squali downgraded eBay’s stock to ‘Hold’ from ‘Buy’, while reducing his price target to $27 from $72, which represents a potential upside of just 4% from the stock’s current price. Famous activist investor Carl Icahn, who also played an important role in getting eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) to spin-off Paypal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:PYPL), was the largest shareholder of the combined company among funds in our database, owning over 46 million shares on June 30.

Finally, both Point72 Asset Management and Soros Fund Management sold off their entire stakes of LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) during the second quarter, consisting of 193,100 shares and 13,000 shares respectively. Although LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD)’s stock started the year on a promising note, it cracked significantly after the release of its first quarter earnings on April 30 and ended the second quarter down by 17.3%. The company recently launched ‘Next Wave’, which is an original list that will identify and profile the upcoming influencers in different industries. For the second quarter of the year, the company reported EPS of $0.55 on revenue of $712 million, compared to analysts’ consensus estimate of EPS of $0.30 on revenue of $679.82 million. Unlike Point72 and Soros Fund Management, Eric Bannasch‘s Cadian Capital was one of several hedge funds that initiated a stake in LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) during the second quarter, and held 571,100 shares at the end of June.

Disclosure: None