Manole Capital Management, an investment management company, focused on covering the Financial and Technology sectors, released its second quarter 2023 investor letter. A copy of the same can be downloaded here. The letter discussed the pending debt ceiling crisis, a few macro issues like the money market and stock market, household savings, the labor environment, the Fed, inflation trends, and interest rates. The majority of the letter is focused on specific Fintech and financial issues. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2023.
Manole Capital Management highlighted stocks like Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in the second quarter 2023 investor letter. Headquartered in Cupertino, California, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is a multinational technology company that designs and manufactures smartphones, personal computers, tablets, wearables, and accessories. On July 6, 2023, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock closed at $191.81 per share. One-month return of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) was 6.22%, and its shares gained 31.06% of their value over the last 52 weeks. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has a market capitalization of $3.017 trillion.
Manole Capital Management made the following comment about Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in its second quarter 2023 investor letter:
“Despite this, the S&P 500 is up 7% this year and the Nasdaq is up +11%. Technology rebounded from a challenging 2022 and many large tech companies are performing quite well this year. Through mid-May 2023, year-to-date performance of some of the most popular and largest names tech names is impressive. For tech companies with market capitalizations over $1 trillion, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is up +35%, Microsoft +33%, Amazon +39%, and Google is +40%. In terms of contribution to the S&P 500’s year-to-date return, Apple and Microsoft represent roughly half of its 2023 performance. Apple, and Microsoft now account for 13.9% of the entire S&P 500 or 80% more concentrated than 2008. For additional perspective, Apple’s market cap is at $2.8 trillion and that is larger than the market cap of the entire Russell 2000. To conclude, it’s distinctly getting more concentrated at the top.
For our purposes, we are just going to focus on software digital wallets, as they are much more common and accessible. If you own an iPhone, then you have an Apple Pay pre-loaded digital wallet. If you have a Samsung phone, you have Samsung Pay available for use. Those two, along with Google Pay and PayPal, are the four most popular digital wallets today. According to the Payments Journal, PayPal has been used (over the last 12 months) by 62% of American consumers, followed by Apple Pay at 41% and Google Pay at 32%.
Digital wallets have tons of advantages, that we are embracing. When we attend Tampa Bay Lightning games, we love having our season tickets easily accessible on our phones (via the Apple Pay wallet), as well as our timed parking pass. When we travel, loading the airline ticket into our Apple Pay wallet is much more convenient than printing out a paper boarding pass. Others are using digital wallets to track their expenses, budget properly, and even help them easily pay their bills. Digital wallets are still in their infancy and have decades of future growth; we believe the smartphone is simply the best interface and platform for digital wallets…” (Click here to read the full text)
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is in 8th position on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 131 hedge fund portfolios held Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) at the end of first quarter 2023 which was 135 in the previous quarter.
We discussed Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in another article and shared the list of best stocks for the next 20 years. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q2 2023 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
