Apple may have been the darling of Wall Street for some time while Facebook tagged along, but in the past few months, that pairing has been flipped on its head.
Hedge funds poured close to $3 billion in new and existing Facebook positions in the first quarter, making the social networking company the top purchase, according to S&P Global Market intelligence. The majority of that — $2.1 billion — came in the form of brand new Facebook positions.
Apple was a different story. In Q1, hedge funds sold more than $5 billion of the stock, with the vast majority — $4.8 billion — coming from positions being completely closed out.
In fact, Facebook was not simply the top tech buy but the top buy among all stocks, followed by Broadcom, Google parent Alphabet and Eli Lilly. Apple, on the other hand, topped the seller's list, followed by PepsiCo, Amazon and Priceline.