50 Stocks That Matter Most To Hedge Funds

Here is the final table. These are the most popular #1 stock picks of nearly 750 equity hedge funds. You probably guessed it right, Apple is the most popular #1 stock pick among hedge funds. Another interesting stock among the top 5 is Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK.B). Let’s take this opportunity and tell you why it isn’t a great idea to buy BRK-B if your goal is to tap into Buffett’s investing wisdom. We usually don’t recommend investing in hedge funds because of their high fees. Our research has shown that investors were able to beat the market by an average of 18 percentage points per year by investing in their top 15 small-cap ideas (read the details).

Warren Buffett doesn’t charge his investors huge fees. His salary is actually microscopic in comparison to what he has done for his investors. The problem with investing in Berkshire is that it hoards a ton of cash and this affects its returns. Last year, the New York Times ran an article bashing Buffett. We explain in this article why the New York Times was wrong about Buffett. In a nutshell, Buffett’s top stock picks actually perform much better than index funds even when you buy them two weeks after the 13F filings. By buying Buffett’s entire 13F portfolio investors could have outperformed the market by 6 percentage points per year between 1999 and 2009.

We haven’t done any back tests based on the following list. Theoretically it should yield much better returns than Goldman’s original 50 VIP Stocks list. For the time being you can use it as a source of ideas for further research. Here is our list: