Long-Term Performance of Hedge Funds’ Popular Picks

Visa Inc (NYSE:V) also increased slightly in popularity during the 1-year period. At the end of March 2016, there were 106 funds bullish on the stock, which represented 13.80% of the active funds that we tracked. A year later, those numbers were 110 and 16.27%, respectively.

Let’s move on to the tech sector. Among the 10 most popular stocks at the end of March 2016, the tech stock that registered the highest return over the following 12 months was Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), whose shares surged by 52%. The number of funds long the stock declined to 129 from 133 during the same period, but it should be mentioned that in percentage terms, 19.10% of the funds in our database were bullish on Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) at the end of March, up from 17.40% a year earlier.

The time-frame in question was marked by a number of big and small events for Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), which announced topping $100 billion in sales in January 2016. In May 2016, the online retailer announced that it would lease 40 cargo planes. Seeing as the company had previously bought thousands of truck trailers and has started to handle the shipping of containers between China and the U.S, investors immediately assumed that Amazon was planning to build its own logistics network in a segment that is dominated by UPS and FedEx. In other news, Amazon started testing drone deliveries last December and its Prime Day last July 12 was the biggest in its history, with sales estimated to have hit $1.0 billion. Moreover, in May 2016, Chamath Palihapitiya, founder and CEO of Social Capital, pitched Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) at the 2016 Sohn Conference, where he said that it would be valued at $3.0 trillion by 2025.

Four other tech giants, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL), and Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) registered a slight decline in popularity during the period, despite their stocks gaining ground. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) posted its first quarterly decline in revenue in April 2016 and the following two quarters also registered year-on-year drops. Among the funds we track, 113 were bullish on the iPhone maker at the end of the first quarter of 2017, representing 16.7% of the funds that we track. A year earlier, 152 funds held shares of the company (19.80% of funds). During the 12-month period, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s stock gained 36%.

We’ll check out the performance of the other tech stocks, as well as two popular healthcare stocks on the final page of this article.