Boeing, Google Among Top Hedge Fund Holdings

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Mar 19, 10:00AM EDT · Published May 22, 7:30AM EDT

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A look at which stocks the top 50 hedge funds own, without any need for comment (via Factset):

The 50 largest hedge funds increased their equity exposure by over 5% in Q 1 2013 This quarter, Boeing Co. was the favorite allocation of the funds. The stock experienced $1.6 billion in inflows, which amounted to nearly 250% of its Q4 value in the funds’ aggregate portfolio. Boeing’s shares are up 28.2% year to date (“YTD”), compared to 15.7% for the S&P 500. However, the largest dollar value increase in equity exposure arose from the January IPO of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd which was backed in part by Apollo Global Management LP. It’s also interesting to note that though the funds sold some exposure in Google Inc. (Cl A), the technology company was present of the majority (62%) of the fifty hedge funds portfolios. This distinction was previously held by Apple. Two quarters ago, Apple was held by just as widely as Google and it was the largest equity holding of nearly one fourth of the funds. However, by Q1 2013, Apple was held by only 40% of the funds with only four carrying it as the top stock holding.

While the top 50 hedge fund managers largely increased their exposure to equities, the funds also made significant reductions to their stakes in two successful stocks in 2013: News Corp. (Cl A) and American International Group Inc. The funds reduced their holding in News Corp by 20.3% and the stock represented the largest individual equity sale in three of the fifty hedge funds. In addition, the funds reduced their exposure to AIG by 16.2%. With these sales, fund investors seem to be predicting a slowdown or reversal for these two issues, as AIG and News Corp have had very similar YTD returns as Boeing in 2013: 27.2% and 28.8%, respectively.

Shares of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) are fractionally higher in premarket trading, and Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is down fractionally. Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA), News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWSA) and American International Group Inc. (NYSE: AIG) are thus far inactive.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.