Malcolm Fairbairn and Ascend Capital’s Top 10 Stock Picks

Ascend Capital is a San Francisco based long-short equity hedge fund that was founded in 1999. The fund’s founder and Chief Investment Officer is Malcolm Fairbairn. Ascend Capital has more than $3 Billion in AUM as of May 2011. Ascend Partners II fund had a 3-year annualized return of 8.3% between 2006 and 2008, and lost only 3% in 2008. Ascend Partners II was among Barron’s Top 100 hedge funds in 2009. Ascend Partners II returned 8.6% annually between January 2004 and May 2010. Ascend Partners, Ascend’s flagship fund returned 16.2% annually between Jan 2000 and September 2007. Fairbairn previously worked at Citadel Investment Group and Strome Susskind. Malcolm Fairbairn holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and has B.S. and M.S. degrees in Chemical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Ascend Capital’s top 10 stock picks gained 1.5% during the second quarter, beating the S&P 500 index by 1.4 percentage points. Here are Malcolm Fairbairn’s top 10 stock picks:

Fairbairn’s top stock pick was Comcast (CMCSK) and the stock returned nearly 5% during the first quarter. His second largest position, Air Products (APD), returned 6.6%. Incidentally he increased his holdings in APD by 140% during the first quarter. Phill Gross’ Adage Capital more than quadrupled its position in APD to $155 Million as well. Ric Dillon’s Diamond Hill has the second largest position in APD with $147 Million at the end of March. You can see the list of all hedge funds with positions in a given stock on each stock’s page. Alternatively you can check out a hedge fund’s all stock holdings on that hedge fund’s page.

We will keep you updated on changes in Ascend Capital’s portfolio.