Michael Burry of The Big Short Likes Apple, Bearish on Banks

International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM)

International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) is the only stock covered in this article which ended the first quarter with gains. Though it has given up some of those gains in the present quarter, it is still trading 10% in the green year-to-date. Due to the gains the stock has made so far in 2016, several analysts believe that the bear run the stock went through starting in 2013 has now ended. Their bullishness also stems from the fact that the ‘strategic imperatives’ in which International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) has been investing for the past few quarters have started showing results, and that the new products from the company like its cloud analytics platform, Watson, have been gaining a lot of traction. In the last few weeks, the company has laid off a large number of its employees as part of its efforts ‘to retool for cloud services and data analysis’. On May 17, analysts at Morgan Stanley reiterated their ‘Buy’ rating and $168 price target on the stock. Canadian billionaire Prem Watsa‘s Fairfax Holdings didn’t make any changes to its stake in International Business Machines Corp. during the first quarter and continued to own 1.36 million shares of the company at the end of that period.

Largest Equity Holding

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)

– Shares Owned by Scion Asset Management (as of March 31): 75,000

– Value of Holding (as of March 31): $8.17 million

With Scion Asset Management keeping its stake in the company unchanged during the first quarter, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) continued to remain the fund’s largest equity holding at the end of March. Shares of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) ended the first quarter with gains of over 4%, however, they have given up those gains and more this quarter, following the company’s first-quarter earnings release and are currently trading down by 5% year-to-date. While some analysts believe that the downfall in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s stock since the past many months is a direct result of CEO Tim Cook’s mismanagement in not allocating a significant chunk of its profits towards R&D, others argue that this mismanagement happened prior to Mr. Cook assuming the role of the company’s CEO and that he had brought back R&D spending (as a percentage of its revenue) to its historical average. The company recently made a $1 billion investment in Chinese ride sharing service company Didi Chuxing. Billionaire Warren Buffett‘s Berkshire Hathaway initiated a stake in Apple during the first quarter by purchasing 9.8 million shares of the company.

Disclosure: None