A number of top hedge fund managers dialed back their Apple holdings in Q3, just in time to avoid a slide that sent the stock tumbling from its all-time high.
Looking at recently filed 13-F SEC filings, a new report from FactSet found that the 50 largest hedge funds cut their exposure to the stock in the three months ended September 30. The disclosures, which offer a snapshot of the portfolios of high-profile fund managers including John Paulson, David Einhorn and Daniel Loeb, show that while Apple remains the top holding of 12 of the hedge funds considered, in the aggregate funds' cut their stake in the company.
Overall, the 50 firms reduced their holdings of Apple by 1.8 million shares, worth some $1.2 billion, over the third quarter. “The funds’ shifting sentiment towards Apple seems to be prescient in this case,” writes FactSet research analyst Michael Amenta, “the stock closed the quarter just 5% off its current 52-week high, and has since dropped 20.9%.”
The stock plunged sharply through a fall correction that had it flirting with $500 last Friday. Apple snapped back with an intraday reversal and was up another $38.76 to $566.44 on Monday, a 7.4% gain that was its second-best single-day showing of the year.
Of course, the nature of 13-F filings means it is impossible to know whether Stephen Mandel’s Lone Pine Capital, Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital and James Simons’ Renaissance Technologies got out at the September peak or sometime earlier, just that they cut their positions during the quarter and were the most active sellers among the 50 funds, according to FactSet. Loeb’s Third Point Management, on the other hand, was a large buyer in the quarter.
SEC filings do not reveal the entirety of hedge fund managers’ holdings – short positions and pre-IPO holdings of private companies are among the items that remain undisclosed – but the snapshot of the long equity positions of the 50 largest managers show Apple as a continued favorite with $11.7 billion of the $125.4 billion managed by the group selected. That easily outpaces the rest of ht the top five: LyondellBasel Industries ($9.2 billion), Google ($6.8 billion), AIG ($4.5 billion) and Procter & Gamble ($4.1 billion).
In the case of AIG, Third Point and OZ Management, a unit of Och-Ziff Capital Management, were the most aggressive institutional purchasers in the third quarter, and are both now among the top 10 holders of the insurer’s stock. Not only that, but each has more than 10% of its equity portfolio exposure in the stock. That still ranks behind Bruce Berkowitz’s Fairholme Fund, the largest private holder of AIG (behind only the U.S. Treasury), which has 34.7% of its portfolio in the stock.
Follow @SchaeferStreet on Twitter, or on Forbes at the top of this post. Subscribe to updates on Facebook.