Argosy Investors recently released its Q1 2021 Investor Letter, a copy of which you can read here. First-quarter 2021 performance was 8.2% in select accounts. The S&P 500 by comparison returned 7.0%. You should check out Argosy Investors’ top 5 stock picks for investors to buy right now, which could be the biggest winners of 2021.
In the Q1 2021 Investor Letter, the fund highlighted a few stocks and Royal Gold Inc (NASDAQ:RGLD) is one of them. Royal Gold Inc (NASDAQ:RGLD) is mining company. In the last three months, Royal Gold Inc (NASDAQ:RGLD) stock gained 14.4% and on April 16th it had a closing price of $117.63. Here is what the fund said:
“Gold royalties business achieve 2 objectives for us: 1) It’s a good business model with strong returns through the gold price cycle; and 2) it provides some protection from inflation, should it materialize due to the increasingly loose fiscal and monetary policy decisions the United States (and other developed market economies) is making.
I don’t want to stay on my soapbox for too long, but this is the first time in history that I’m aware of politicians openly stating that debt levels don’t matter, even in the long term. In 2019, the government spent $4.4 trillion. Of those expenditures, $0.4 trillion was spent making interest payments on existing debt at the time of $16.9 trillion. The interest rate on that debt was 2.4%. Debt for 2021 is projected to increase to $22.5 trillion, and then to $33 trillion by the end of the decade.
I don’t have a crystal ball, but if interest rates increased to previously “normal” levels of only 5%, U.S. interest payments would be over $1.1 billion in 2021, 25% of U.S. total expenditures in 2019. In the event that happens, there are a few choices: 1) run a larger deficit which could lead to accelerating debt levels; 2) reduce government spending on things like the military, Medicare, Social Security, pensions, and other programs; or 3) the government allows or encourages inflation to reduce the value of its debt obligations.
To be clear, this spiraling debt outcome currently seems and likely is not happening within the next several years, but the probability of it occurring is not zero and things have changed rapidly before. For that reason, I think an investment in Royal Gold provides some minor insulation against inflation.”
In Q3 2020, the number of bullish hedge fund positions on Royal Gold Inc (NASDAQ:RGLD) stock increased by about 11% from the previous quarter (see the chart here), so a number of other hedge fund managers believe in RGLD’s growth potential. Our calculations showed that Royal Gold Inc (NASDAQ:RGLD) isn’t ranked among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds.
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.
At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost real estate prices. So, we recommended this real estate stock to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 15 best innovative stocks to buy to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our website:
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
