Madison Investments Sold Booking Holdings (BKNG) and ExxonMobil (XOM) Stocks

Madison Investments, an independently-owned investment firm, recently published its first-quarter Madison Investors Fund commentary – a copy of which can be downloaded here. During the first quarter of 2020, the Madison Investors Fund returned -20.53%, while the benchmark S&P 500 was down 19.6%.

In the said letter, Madison Investments highlighted Booking Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:BKNG) and Exxon Mobil Corp (NYSE:XOM) stocks. Booking Holdings is the world’s leader in online travel. Exxon Mobil is an oil and gas company based in Texas. Here is what Madison Investments said:

“Booking Holdings. We believe that travel industries may see a delayed rebound in demand as social distancing will be necessary for some time after peak cases. We felt the stock held up relatively well after its February 26th earnings call, providing an opportunistic exit point.

ExxonMobil. In early February, we realized that ExxonMobil was experiencing a simultaneous downturn in all three of its segments, and we thought this would continue. We had expected segment performance to be less correlated. Furthermore, we realized that the balance sheet leverage had increased beyond what we had anticipated at the initiation of our investment.”

In Q4 2019, the number of bullish hedge fund positions on BKNG stock decreased by about 15% from the previous quarter (see the chart here).

In Q4 2019, the number of bullish hedge fund positions on XOM stock increased by about 15% from the previous quarter (see the chart here).

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