Billionaire investor Carl Icahn made news again this week, with an open letter to Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook. As most know, the “Icahn Effect” has been a powerful one for Apple shareholders. Since he first announced a stake in Apple in August of 2013, the stock has more than doubled. In fact, each time Icahn publicly talks about Apple, the stock tends to go up.
But this time, instead of following Icahn into Apple, there is a another Icahn-owned stock that offers more upside. Plus, it comes with an added bonus: You can buy it at a cheaper price than what Icahn paid for his shares.
Icahn initiated a position in Manitowoc (symbol MTW) in late 2014 at $20.03 a share. He then added to his position in early 2015 at $20.69 a share. The stock now sells for $19.75. So the world’s best investor just did all the work for you. By his actions, he’s telling us that he thinks Manitowoc is cheap at $20.40. And that’s almost a $1 more than where the stock trades today.
Icahn owns almost 8% of Manitowoc now. And in February the company agreed to Icahn’s demand to separate its two businesses into two different companies, one for its crane business and the other for its food service business. According to analysts, this separation will create value for shareholders and could reprice the stock to $30 a share — or 50% return from its share price today. In addition to the potential revaluation of MTW shares from the split of its business lines, MTW is cheap on its current valuation. The stock trades at just 14 times forward earnings.
So today, you can get an edge on the world’s best investor by buying Manitowoc at a cheaper price than he did. And he is working for you, as a vocal shareholder, to unlock potentially 50% more value in the stock. Not a bad deal.
BillionairesPortfolio.com helps average investors invest alongside Wall Street billionaires. By selecting the best ideas from the best billionaire investors and hedge funds, our exited stock investment recommendations have averaged a 31% gain since 2012, beating even Carl Icahn’s record for the same period.
This past Friday was the deadline for the biggest-most influential investors in the world to publicly disclose their first quarter portfolio holdings to the SEC.
At BillionairesPortfolio.com, this quarterly event is our bread and butter. We scour through hosts of filings to uncover the best ideas from the world’s best investors. We want to know what they like and how convicted they are in their opinions. High conviction typically equals a very large stake. And just like stakeholders in companies tend to make good employees, large shareholders in companies tend to make good investors. They tend to fight relentlessly to get what they want, and need, from management, to turn their investment into a profitable one.
For insight into some of the highest conviction individual stocks owned right now, by the most powerful investors in the world, see my Nasdaq.com piece from last week (here). Today, I want to talk about the massive positions that have been taken by billionaire investors in ETFs and Options. As some of these investors have become so large, and as the investing environment has become so dependent on the macro picture, we have found that more and more of the biggest investors in the world are utilizing ETFs and options, in addition to individual stocks.
With that, here are the five biggest ETF and/or option positions we found at the top of our billionaire investor and hedge fund list.
1) One of the biggest and boldest option trades of the first quarter was made by billionaire hedge fund manager David Tepper. Tepper has perhaps the best track record over the past 20 years, returning close to 40% annualized, before fees. According to his recent filing, he initiated a more than $1.3 billion call option on stocks, via both the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) and the Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQ). The notional value of this option position represents about one third of Tepper’s equity assets under management. This is no surprise, given he recently said he thinks the S&P 500 is still cheap and should return 15% this year. That’s another 11% from current levels.
2) Billionaire hedge fund manager Stephen Mandel of Lone Pine Capital took a $2 billion bearish option position (puts) on the euro ETF (FXE). The European Central Bank is in the early innings of a massive QE campaign, which, as the ECB chief Mario Draghi has explicitly said, tends to result in a falling exchange rate.
3) Billionaire global macro hedge fund manager Louis Bacon of Moore Capital Management reported a $1 billion+ call option on the S&P 500 ETF (SPY). This is another example of a top billionaire hedge fund manager taking a levered bet that the stock market will resume climbing.
4) Billionaire John Paulson, who is having an excellent 2015, reported a $1.1 billion call option on gold through the SPDR Gold Shares ETF (GLD). Paulson has been a long-term bull on gold.
5) Hedge fund manager Michael Masters of The Marlin Fund, reported two huge option positions according to his SEC filing. Masters was recently named by Barron’s as one of the top three performing hedge funds over the past three years, returning 42% annualized. According to his recent SEC filing, The Marlin Fund has a nearly $600 million call option in Citi (C), and a $193 million call option on UPS (UPS). Masters is very bullish on stocks. He also had $105 million call option on the Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQ).
BillionairesPortfolio.com helps average investors invest alongside Wall Street billionaires. By selecting the best ideas from the best billionaire investors and hedge funds, our exited stock investment recommendations have averaged a 31% gain since 2012, beating even Carl Icahn’s record for the same period.
Last week a roster of the best and most influential investors in the world gave us a glimpse into their minds and their portfolios. Once a year, the heavy weights of the investing world converge on Lincoln Center in the Upper West side of New York City to give their money, their time and some of their best investment ideas, to raise money for pediatric cancer. The Sohn Investment Conference has raised more than $50 million since 1995. And it’s become an event that moves markets.
That was Monday. Later in the week, many of the same billionaire investors made their way West to Las Vegas for the seventh annual SALT Conference. The SALT Conference has become the Super Bowl week of the alternative investment world, headlined by virtually every big influential investor and many heavyweight politicos, including former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke.
Why do we care what these billionaire investors have to say?
Because they have the power to influence outcomes, which means their best ideas tend to be very profitable ideas. And with that, it tends to be quite lucrative to follow the lead of these investors. In fact, over the past year, three of the top billionaire investors in the world have said as much — either explicitly or implicitly telling us that investing alongside them is a good idea.
In August of last year, billionaire Bill Ackman said in his quarterly investor letter that “free riders” can follow him “with none of the costs or the illiquidity, and with all of the upside.”
That same month, billionaire Carl Icahn wrote a public essay, where he laid out the power of his “board effect” and how average investors could use it to their advantage. He said “if a person invested in each company on the date that the (Icahn) designee joined the Board and sold on the date that the Icahn designee left the Board they would have obtained an annualized return of 27%. “
Finally, this past week, billionaire Dan Loeb joined in, making the case for the value big influential investors offer to the average investor, saying they can “help power the powerless.”
At BillionairesPortfolio.com, following the best ideas from the world’s best billionaire investors is what we do. With that said, below are what we believe to be the five “best ideas” we heard last week from the world’s best billionaire investors:
1) Billionaire hedge fund manager Larry Robbins has returned 20% annualized (before fees) since 2000 vs. a 4.5% return for the S&P 500 during the same time period. Robbins talked up two stocks that he believes can double: Brookdale Senior Living (BKD) and Abbvie (ABBV). BKD is a play on the aging population of America. Robbins said “demographics are easier than macroeconomics, and the easiest thing to bet on is an aging population.” Brookdale is the largest nursing home company in the country. It owns the majority of its own real estate, or about $28 a share worth, according to Robbins. This means you are getting Brookdale’s business for just $7 a share. The other stock Robbins floated a potential double was Abbvie (ABBV). He said Abbvie is “trading relatively cheap” with a drug pipeline that is underappreciated and it’s difficult for competitors to make generic versions.
2) Billionaires Dan Loeb and Carl Icahn protégé, Keith Meister admitted to owning a combined $2.5 billion worth of YUM Brands (YUM). Loeb likes Yum as a cheap play on China, and Meister likes Yum as an activist play. He believes if Yum spins off its Chinese operations, the stock could be worth as much as $160 a share, or a 75% return from its share price today. Meister also said this was the biggest position his fund has ever taken in a stock.
3) Billionaire Barry Rosenstein of the $12 billion activist hedge fund Jana Partners said that it had taken a $2 billion stake in Qualcomm (QCOM). Rosenstein went further to say this was the biggest position his fund had ever taken. Rosenstein believes Qualcomm is undervalued and that the company needs to ramp up its stock buyback program as well as split off its chipset unit, either of which could drive the stock price dramatically higher.
4) Billionaire hedge fund manager David Tepper, who has returned around 40% before fees over the past 20 years, was very bullish on stocks, in general. Tepper said it’s hard enough to fight one Fed (the U.S. Federal Reserve) but to fight 4 Feds/central banks is impossible. Tepper believes the S&P 500 can return 15% this year. Tepper’s biggest position in his hedge fund is General Motors (GM). Tepper owns a billion dollars plus of GM and has successfully pushed for GM to buy back more than $10 billion of its own stock.
5) Noticeably absent at the two high profile investor conferences last week was billionaire Carl Icahn, arguably the best investor alive. Icahn could, however, be preparing to shock the investing world this week, on his own time. Icahn tweeted on April 28, that Apple (AAPL) is “still undervalued” and that we should expect another in-depth report from him on Apple “within two weeks.” Remember Icahn has said Apple is worth as much as $216 a share or a 76% return from its share price today.
BillionairesPortfolio.com helps average investors invest alongside Wall Street billionaires. By selecting the best ideas from the best billionaire investors and hedge funds, our exited stock investment recommendations have averaged a 31% gain since 2012, beating even Carl Icahn’s record for the same period.
Over the past six months, energy prices have taken a dramatic fall. The price of oil traded as low as $42, nearly half of its value just last November. And natural gas dropped by almost 40%.
As such, stocks with high exposure to these key commodities, particularly producers, have been hammered.
But oil is on the rebound now, giving oil stocks a big bounce. And natural gas, looks like it might be next. So which stocks are best positioned to win from a bounce in natural gas?
First, there are a few interesting things to consider when speculating on a bounce in natural gas.
Natural gas currently trades just around $2.50. If we look back on the long term chart of natural gas, the time spent under $2.50 has historically been limited. Over the past 15-years, each of the four times the commodity spent time below $2.50, it followed with a rebound back above $6.
Also, with coal still representing the majority of fuel used to generate electricity, there are forthcoming new Environmental Protection Agency rules that will force power companies to switch from coal to natural gas as early as this summer, creating instant demand for natural gas.
Finally, perhaps the greatest energy trader of all-time, and self-made billionaire T. Boone Pickens, has recently said he thinks we will see $6 natural gas again.
If he’s right, and natural gas bounces back to levels last seen just over a year ago, many small and mid-cap natural gas stocks are in position to triple, by returning to levels these stocks traded when natural gas was last $6.
Below are five stocks that could triple if Pickens is right about natural gas:
1) Exco Resouces (XCO) – Billionaires Wilbur Ross, Howard Marks and Prem Watsa own more than 40% of this stock. When natural gas was last $6, XCO was trading at $6 or 215% higher than current levels.
2) SandRidge Energy (SD)- Billionaire hedge fund managers, Leon Cooperman and Prem Watsa own almost 17% of SandRidge. This stock traded above around $7 in April of 2014, when natural gas was $6. That’s 266% higher than its current share price today.
3) Stone Energy (SGY) – SGY was around $40, or 150% higher than current levels, last time natural gas was $6.
4) Halcyon Resources (HK) – If natural gas prices go back to $6, HK should be worth almost $4.50 a share. That’s a triple from its current price of $1.44.
5) Chesapeake Energy (CHK) – Billionaire Carl Icahn owns nearly 20% of Chesapeake, after buying more of the stock last month, when the stock dipped to $13 a share. Chesapeake is one of the biggest natural gas producers in the United States and therefore the purest play of any stock on rising natural gas prices. Chesapeake also has over $4 billion in cash, after selling assets late last year. Chesapeake could double on natural gas prices returning to $6.
BillionairesPortfolio.com helps average investors invest alongside Wall Street billionaires. By selecting the best ideas from the best billionaire investors and hedge funds, our exited stock investment recommendations have averaged a 31% gain since 2012, beating even Carl Icahn’s record for the same period.
At Billionairesportfolio.com we strive to curate the best ideas from the world’s best billionaire investors and hedge funds. Many of the richest investors primarily pursue situations where they believe they can influence change in a company, and subsequently create tremendous value for shareholders.
Below are five stocks owned by billionaire investors, each of which the investor involved has projected to double in price, or better:
1) Hertz (HTZ) – Billionaire Barry Rosenstein, head of the activist hedge fund Jana Partners, recently said at an investing conference that he believes Hertz shares could triple in price. Rosenstein said Hertz could buy back as much as 20 percent of its shares, which would double earnings per share and cause the stock to triple.
2) Monsanto (MON) – Billionaire Larry Robbins of the hedge fund Glenview Capital Management recently said Monsanto could be worth as much as $250 to $300 a share, which would mean a return of 100% to 150% from its share price today.
3) Navistar (NAV) – Billionaire money manager, Mario Gabelli recently said on CNBC that Navistar should double. He expects the truck maker’s business to improve as the economy improves. Billionaire Carl Icahn also owns a huge chunk of Navistar, almost 20% of the company.
4) Nuance (NUAN) – Icahn owns almost 19% of Nuance, and his son Brett Icahn is on the company’s board. The legendary billionaire activist investor tweeted that he believes Nuance, the creator of the Siri voice for Apple, could triple in price.
5) Platform Specialty Products Corporation (PAH) – Billionaire activist hedge fund manager, Bill Ackman, owns more than 22% of Platform Specialty Products – squarely in the driver’s seat. Recently, the CEO of Platform said in an interview that he believes PAH will sell for $200 a share one day. That would be more than a 600% return from its share price today.
BillionairesPortfolio.com helps average investors invest alongside Wall Street billionaires. By selecting the best ideas from the best billionaire investors and hedge funds, our exited stock investment recommendations have averaged a 28% gain since 2012.
Stocks have been on a great run and with the European Central Bank and Bank of Japan pumping money into the global economy–picking up where the Fed left off–expect it to continue.
Given the low global inflationary environment and the ultra-easy global central bank activity, bond yields in the U.S. have remained subdued, despite the expectation that the Fed will be raising rates for the first time in nine years later this year. The 10-year note is yielding less than 1.9% this morning.
Meanwhile, we’re seeing a rare occurrence in stocks, and an extremely bullish one. For one of the few times in history, stock dividends are paying a yield greater than U.S. Treasurys. The yield on Dow stocks is 2.25% and the yield on S&P 500 stocks is 1.99%.
This positive yield differential for stocks has only happened five other times in history; each time stocks went up big one-month and three-months later.
If that’s not enough, April happens to be the single best month for Dow stocks over the past 50-years.
With this all in mind, here are a few ways to play it:
You could buy the Dow Jones Industrials Average ETF (DIA) or the three times leveraged Dow ETF (UDOW). Or, our favored way at BillionairesPortfolio.com is to invest alongside an influential investor that has huge skin in the game. This gives you an extra layer of protection, a fellow shareholder that has the power and influence to control his own destiny. With that, you could buy these four Dow component stocks, each controlled by one of the top billionaire investors in the world:
1) Apple: Billionaire activist legend Carl Icahnowns Apple. He says it’s worth $200, and he’s recently been adding to his position. Apple has multiple catalysts in April. The company is launching its watch. Apple reports earnings this month, where we could potentially see another stock buyback announcement and/or an increase its dividend.
2) Dupont: Billionaire activist investor Nelson Peltz has nearly 20% of his hedge fund’s assets in Dupont. He owns nearly 1.8% of the company and has asked Dupont to grant him and his team Board seats, as he wants DuPont broken up to unlock value.
3) Dow Chemical: Billionaire activist hedge fund manager Dan Loeb is also agitating for change at Dow. Loeb owns more than $1 billion of Dow shares and the company has just agreed to split off its chlorine business, a byproduct of Dan Loeb’s activist efforts.
4) Coke: Everyone knows Warren Buffett owns Coke. The interesting part is that Buffett has recently orchestrated a huge merger between two of the largest big-brand food companies, Heinz and Kraft. Kraft shareholders made a 35% premium on their shares overnight. Applying the same takeover multiple to Coke, Coke could be worth as much 40% on a private equity buyout.
BillionairesPortfolio.com helps average investors invest alongside Wall Street billionaires. By selecting the best ideas from the best billionaire investors and hedge funds, our exited stock investment recommendations have averaged a 31% gain since 2012, beating even the great Carl Icahn’s record for the same period.
Billionaire investor, Bill Ackman, CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, has one of the best investing track records in the world.
When you add back fees, Ackman has returned 1,199% since starting his fund in 2004. That compares to 119% in the S&P 500 for the same period. That’s ten times better than the S&P 500.
His short position on Herbalife has been very well documented. In his interview with Bloomberg on Thursday, he said “it will” go to zero, and he confidently said his fund is “very short.” This comes after the stock has halved since July of last year.
A billionaire face-off on Herbalife started early 2013, following a presentation by Ackman at the Ira Sohn investment conference in New York, where he made the case for his Herbalife short. It included the accusation that Herbalife was running a ponzi-scheme. At that time, the stock was trading the mid $30s. Months later, billionaires Dan Loeb and Carl Icahn both took shots at Ackman’s thesis, and took long positions in the stock, attempting to squeeze Ackman. It worked, for a while. The stock ultimately ran up to $81 in January of 2014.
Ackman says they “bought a lot of put options” on that run up, “in the $70s and $80s.” Now HLF shares are trading back in the $30s, and Ackman says it’s a race to the bottom. He thinks the stock will either hit zero or the government will step in before that, and shut them down.
At this point, Ackman’s campaign against Herbalife is looking quite good.
Love him or hate him, Ackman is one of the best performing investors on the planet, and for average investors, his portfolio might be one of the easiest to replicate. We know about his Herbalife position. Here’s a look at the seven publicly reported core holdings of Ackman’s $18+ billion Pershing Square fund, as of its recent SEC disclosures. These are positions where Pershing owns more than 5% of a company:
Allergan AGN NaN% (AGN) – AGN represents 34% of his portfolio. He has a $6 billion stake in the company.
Air Products & Chemicals APD +0.72% (APD) – APD represents 17% of his portfolio. He has a $3.1 billion stake.
Canadian Pacific Rail (CP) – CP represents a 14% of his portfolio. He has a $2.6 billion stake.
Burger King Worldwide, Inc. (BKW) – BKW represents 8.5% of his portfolio. He has a stake worth $1.1 billion.
Platform Specialty Products Corp (PAH) – PAH represents 5% of his portfolio. He has a stake worth about $940 million.
The Howard Hughes Corporation (HHC) – HHC represents 3% of his portfolio. He has a stake of $510 million.
Zoetis Inc. (ZTS) – ZTS is a relatively new addition to his portfolio. According Pershing’s recent 13d filing, it has a stake representing about 10% of the Pershing portfolio, or a position valued at about $1.8 billion.
Ackman’s Pershing Square fund also holds small stakes in Fannie and Freddie Mac, as well as at least two undisclosed small positions. But Ackman has more than 75% of his fund’s money in just four stocks – long positions. That shows extraordinary conviction, and it also means he can’t afford to lose. That conviction and confidence is present only because he has the ability to gain control of, and influence on, the companies he invests in.
BillionairesPortfolio.com helps average investors invest alongside Wall Street billionaires. By selecting the best ideas from the best billionaire investors and hedge funds, our exited stock investment recommendations have averaged a 31% gain since 2012.
These days everyone is familiar with big-brand activism, led by billionaires Carl Icahn and Bill Ackman.
Icahn has often made a splash in the media in the past year, using his influence and voice to push for change in big companies. And it works. He has made a huge impact for shareholders in Apple and Netflix. But even though both Icahn and Ackman continue to produce tremendous returns, they have limitations on what activist campaigns they can pursue.
They have size constraints, too. Both run multi-billion dollar portfolios, which all but rules out their ability to participate in smaller company investments. And that’s where smaller funds have an advantage.
One of the best, smaller, and lesser-known activist hedge funds we follow in The Billionaires Portfolio is Becker Drapkin. Becker Drapkin is a $300 million small cap activist hedge fund with an outstanding record of selecting big winners. Their average activist campaign (i.e. stock investment) has returned 130%.
Below are the top four stocks in Becker Drapkin’s portfolio. In each case, the fund owns 5% or more of the stock, which gives them a controlling interest in the company. Plus, one of the biggest determinants of success in an activist campaign is the board seat, and Becker Drapkin has at least one seat on the board of directors at each of these companies.
1) Emcore (EMKR)- This is one of Becker Drapkin’ biggest positions. They own 10% of Emcore, with board seats.
2) Fuel Systems (FSYS)- Becker Drapkin owns more than 9% of FSYS, and has board seats.
3) Comverse (CNSI) – Becker Drapkin has more than 10% of their fund’s assets in this stock, with a board seat.
4) Intevac (IVAC)- Becker Drapkin owns more than 9% of this stock, and has board representation as well.
BillionairesPortfolio.com helps average investors invest alongside Wall Street billionaires. By selecting the best ideas from the best billionaire investors and hedge funds, our exited stock investment recommendations have averaged a 31% gain since 2012, beating even Carl Icahn’s record for the same period.
In his quarterly investment letter recently, billionaire activist investor Bill Ackman gave us clues on selecting stocks that can become big winners.
In a world where many think stock prices are efficient, he argues quite the opposite. And in a world where many think good investing has to be sophisticated and only the domain of big, powerful hedge funds, he all but said, it wasn’t.
Here’s what he said: “Minority stakes in high quality businesses can be purchased in the public markets at a discount. These discounts principally arise because of two factors: shareholder disaffection with management,and the short term nature of large amounts of retail and institutional investor capital which can overreact to negative short-term corporate or macro factors.”
He’s telling all investors that there are stocks that are undervalued for all of the wrong reasons. And the average investor can buy them, just like he does.
At Billionairesportfolio.com, one of our favorite screens identifies stocks that are controlled by the world’s top activist hedge funds and have temporarily sold off for non-fundamental reasons.
This is how you find deeply undervalued stocks, with a catalyst at work to unlock value. And that can be a recipe for big winners. The catalyst in this case is a huge, influential, bulldog shareholder that is fighting everyday to ensure his investment is a profitable one.
With that, below is a list of four activist-owned stocks that have pulled back for non- fundamental reasons. And each has at least a 50% upside to the activist hedge fund’s target price. As a bonus, the fifth stock is also activist owned, but it sits near an all-time high. Still, the activist involved in this one thinks another 65% is ahead.
1) Hertz (HTZ) – Billionaires Carl Icahn and Barry Rosenstein own a combined 18% of Hertz. Hertz is down more than 17% over the last 6 months due to accounting issues. Yet billionaire Barry Rosenstein, head of the activist hedge fund Jana Partners, said that Hertz should triple, as they have plenty of cash flow to buy back as much as 25% of their outstanding stock. That’s a 300% return from Hertz’s current share price!
2) Twenty-First Century Fox (FOXA) – Billionaire activist hedge fund manager, Jeff Ubben of ValueAct Capital owns more than $1 billion of Fox. Ubben recently said in an interview that his firm purchased Fox when it sold off after its failed merger attempt, and that he thought the stock was worth $50, or a 50% return from its share price today.
3) NCR Corp. (NCR) – Marcato Capital, a $3 billion activist hedge fund run by Billionaire Bill Ackman’s protégé, Mick McGuire, owns more than 6% of NCR. NCR is down 22% over the past year, yet McGuire recently stated that NCR is worth more than $50 a share, or a 100% return from its share price today.
4) EMC Corp. (EMC) and Juniper Networks (JNPR) – Billionaire Paul Singer, head of the activist hedge fund Elliot Management, owns billion dollar plus stakes in EMC and Juniper. Singer and Elliot have a great track record of forcing companies to sell out at a huge premium. In their last eight activist campaigns in the technology sector, six of the companies were acquired for a significant premium. Elliot has publicly stated that EMC could be worth as much as $45 a share, or a 50% return from its share price today. And Juniper could be worth $35 a share, almost a 50% return from its share price today.
5) Finally, Apple Inc. (AAPL) — Billionaire Carl Icahn has been a very vocal shareholder in Apple. Since tweeting his stake a little more than a year ago, AAPL, the most widely held stock in the world, has more than doubled. Still, Icahn thinks it’s worth $200 a share. That’s 66% higher than its current price.
BillionairesPortfolio.com helps average investors invest alongside Wall Street billionaires. By selecting the best ideas from the best billionaire investors, our exited stock investment recommendations have averaged a 31% gain since 2012 , beating even the great Carl Icahn’s record for the same period.
One of the most profitable ways to piggyback the world’s best billionaire investors and hedge funds is by following their newest positions.
Over the past two weeks there has been significant buying from billionaire investors and hedge funds, which is usually a bullish sign for stocks. Let’s take a look at some of the most recent transactions:
1) Chesapeake Energy (CHK) – Legendary billionaire activist Carl Icahn recently added to his already large position in Chesapeake last week, buying 6.6 million shares at average price of $14.15. That gives Icahn an 11% stake. Chesapeake looks cheap at 9 times earnings, with a dividend yield of 2.5%, and selling at just two thirds of its book value of $21 a share.
2) Valeant Pharmaceuticals (VRX) – Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, of Pershing Square, recently upped his stake in Valeant from 4.9% to 5.7% — at an average price of $196.72. Valeant has been a high flyer. It’s up 38% in 2015 and 54% over the past year. It’s hard to argue with Ackman’s timing. Almost every stock he has purchased over the past 2 years has gone straight up.
3) Manitowoc Company Inc. (MTW) – Billionaire hedge fund manager Larry Robbins, of Glenview Capital Management, initiated a new 6.3% position in Manitowoc — at an average price of $20.41. Manitowoc also happens to be owned by billionaire Carl Icahn. Icahn recently forced the company to split into separate companies, which could potentially unlock $10 of hidden value in this stock according to many wall street analysts.
4) EXA Corporation (EXA) – Billionaire George Soros recently purchased 1.26 million shares of EXA, or 9% of the company, at an average price of $10.10. EXA is small cap software and services company to the automotive industry that has been rumored to be an acquisition target at $16 to $20 share. That would be a 30% to 60% premium from its share price today.
BillionairesPortfolio.com helps average investors invest alongside Wall Street billionaires. By selecting the best ideas from the best billionaire investors and hedge funds, our exited stock investment recommendations have averaged a 31% gain since 2012, beating even the great Carl Icahn’s record for the same period.
