Is ConocoPhillips (COP) A Great Stock Investment?

ClearBridge Investments, an investment management firm, published its “Large Cap Value Strategy” first quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. The ClearBridge Large Cap Value Strategy underperformed its Russell 1000 Value Index benchmark during the first quarter. On an absolute basis, the Strategy had gains in 10 of 11 sectors in which it was invested for the quarter. You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.

ClearBridge Investments, in its Q1 2021 investor letter, mentioned ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP), and shared their insights on the company. ConocoPhillips is a Houston, Texas-based natural gas liquids company that currently has an $81.3 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, COP delivered a 50.83% return, while its 12-month gains are up by 24.03%. As of June 07, 2021, the stock closed at $59.81 per share.

Here is what ClearBridge Investments has to say about ConocoPhillips in its Q1 2021 investor letter:

“While reducing in health care and consumer staples, we increased our exposure to high-quality names in economically sensitive areas of the market. We added to low-cost, high-quality energy names (including) ConocoPhillips. We are positive on the company’s strong balance sheets, competitive positions and exposure to an economic recovery.”

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Our calculations show that ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) does not belong in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As of the end of the first quarter of 2021, ConocoPhillips was in 51 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 49 funds in the fourth quarter of 2020. COP delivered a 4.17% return in the past 3 months.

The top 10 stocks among hedge funds returned 231.2% between 2015 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 Index ETFs by more than 126 percentage points. We know it sounds unbelievable. You have been dismissing our articles about top hedge fund stocks mostly because you were fed biased information by other media outlets about hedge funds’ poor performance. You could have doubled the size of your nest egg by investing in the top hedge fund stocks instead of dumb S&P 500 ETFs. Here you can watch our video about the top 5 hedge fund stocks right now. All of these stocks had positive returns in 2020.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.