Survey Says These Three Gaming Giants Poised For Big Holiday Season

Let’s briefly run you through the trading activity in these stocks among the elite investors we monitor at Insider Monkey. 19 investors in our database held $368 million worth of Sony Corp (ADR) (NYSE:SNE) shares on June 30, while 107 held $18.32 billion in Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) shares. Given that gaming makes up only a fraction of the business activity of the two tech giants (especially in the case of Microsoft), the stock ownership does not represent the sentiment investors have solely towards their gaming operations.

In Activision Blizzard, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATVI) and Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:EA) we can get a much clearer picture of investors’ thoughts on the gaming sector, and sentiment was close when it came to the two game developers. 47 firms we track held 8.50% of EA’s outstanding shares, valued at $1.79 billion, while 46 firms held 8.90% of Activision Blizzard’s shares, worth $1.57 billion. Each stock was also popular in the second quarter, as sales of the current generation of gaming consoles continued to exceed expectations (the console industry was supposed to be dead by now after all). Just 41 firms had held each stock on March 31.

In terms of individual investors, Philippe Laffont’s Coatue Management was a major shareholder of both gaming stocks, holding 6.41 million shares of Activision Blizzard and 5.75 million shares of Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:EA). Laffont trimmed both positions slightly during the second quarter. Cliff Asness’ AQR Capital Management was also a big fan of both companies, owning 2.86 million shares of Activision Blizzard and 4.61 million shares of EA. Asness added more shares to both of those positions during the quarter.

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