Portland Hill Asset Management is a UK-based investment firm launched in 2011 by its founder and CIO Thierry Lucas, who prior to that spent seven years as a partner at Eton Park. Portland Hill utilizes exhaustive fundamental analysis to support all of its investment decisions while also paying particular attention to stocks that could benefit from catalysts both soft and hard.

The Portland Hill Master Fund has delivered extremely volatile returns in recent years, gaining 14.64% in 2017, then losing 22.71% in 2018. It rebounded with a stellar year in 2019 that culminated in gains of 34.58% before its fortunes took a turn for the worse again in 2020. Its compound annual return stood at a modest 5.67% through March 2020.

Portland Hill Asset Management primarily focuses on the European market, but maintains a small stable of U.S equities. The holdings in its 13F portfolio were virtually unchanged in Q2, with only a single, very small position added. Its following top stock picks have been staples of the fund’s portfolio dating back to its first 13F filing in May 2017.

Portland Hill’s Top Stocks

Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)

– Shares Owned (as of June 30): 89,831
– Value of Holding (as of June 30): $19.97 million

– YTD Return: 26.16%

Portland Hill is one of many funds to love Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), with the stock ranking third on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds: 2020 Q2 Rankings. Facebook continues to steam ahead as the world’s social media behemoth, hitting 2.7 billion monthly active users in the middle of this year.

Amid growing calls for Facebook and other tech giants to be broken up, and with the FTC looking into how its acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram have affected the competitive landscape, Facebook is making moves that could insulate it from regulators trying to break it apart. Last week, the company announced the integration of Facebook Messenger with Instagram’s messaging service, which could also strengthen commerce and ad-buying activity across both platforms.

Paypal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:PYPL)

– Shares Owned (as of June 30): 95,200
– Value of Holding (as of June 30): $16.41 million

– YTD Return: 77.74%

Paypal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:PYPL) has been on a tear in 2020, gaining nearly 78% on the strength of its rapidly growing revenue and earnings. In the second quarter, those marks grew by 49% (to $1.09 per share) and 25% (to $5.26 billion) year-over-year respectively. Its payment volume also rose by 29% to $222 billion.

Hedge funds have become far more bullish on Paypal over the past two years, which ranked ninth on the aforementioned list of the most popular stocks among hedge funds. Ownership of the stock among the funds tracked by Insider Monkey’s database jumped by over 40% since the end of Q1 2019.

Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE:BABA)

– Shares Owned (as of June 30): 60,273
– Value of Holding (as of June 30): $13.02 million

– YTD Return: 31.17%

Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE:BABA) is another one of the tech stocks owned by Portland Hill that has defied the tough market conditions in 2020 to post stellar gains of 31%. The Chinese tech giant, which has an impressive stable of commerce, entertainment, and social media platforms, boasts over 874 million monthly mobile users on its ecommerce platforms. If that wasn’t enough, the company’s cloud computing platform AliCloud is expected to turn profitable ahead of schedule thanks to China’s growing cloud market and could generate significant value creation in the coming years.

Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL)

– Class A Shares Owned (as of June 30): 8,728
– Value of Holding (as of June 30): $12.23 million

– YTD Return: 8.34%

Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) was Portland Hill’s largest holding in its first 13F filing and remains one of its favorite stocks and most valuable positions despite the fund having sold over nearly two-thirds of its shares since then. Alphabet is another tech giant that has been under regulatory antitrust scrutiny, though hedge funds like RiverPark Advisors believe the threat is overblown and that if anything, the company could be even more valuable to shareholders were it forced to siphon off some of its less heralded divisions, as the market would be forced to value them as more than an afterthought.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)

– Shares Owned (as of June 30): 20,453
– Value of Holding (as of June 30): $7.46 million

– YTD Return: 55.15%

Perhaps surprisingly, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is the only stock among Portland Hill’s five favorite U.S holdings that isn’t also among the ten most popular stocks among hedge funds, as it ranked 11^th. It may also come as a surprise that Apple’s market cap is 3x that of the entire precious metals mining sector. According to preliminary data compiled by Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty, Apple’s App Store revenue is predicted to have jumped by 31% year-over-year in Q3, to $5.7 billion, which could push its overall Services revenue to $14.5 billion.

The top 10 stocks among hedge funds returned 185% since the end of 2014 and outperformed the S&P 500 Index ETFs by more than 109 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. Below you can watch our video about the top 5 hedge fund stocks right now. All of these stocks had positive returns in 2020.

Video: Top 5 Stocks Among Hedge Funds

At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. 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 precious metals prices. So, we are checking out this junior gold mining stock. We go through lists like the 10 most profitable companies in America to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. 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. If you want to find out the best healthcare stock to buy right now, you can watch our latest hedge fund manager interview here. You can subscribe to our free enewsletter below to receive our stories in your inbox:

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