Billionaire Ken Fisher’s Top 10 Stock Picks
In this article, we will take a look at billionaire Ken Fisher's top 10 stock picks. If you want to see more stocks in this selection, go to Billionaire Ken Fisher's Top 5 Stock Picks.
Ken Fisher, the founder and co-chief investment officer of Fisher Asset Management, is widely known for his contributions to various financial publications as an author. Fisher is known for his contrarian investment strategies and his outspoken personality, which has sometimes landed him in controversy. Fisher said earlier this year that investors can strategically position their portfolios to benefit from the start of a new bull market by investing in categories that suffered the most during the bear market. Fisher believes that the market entered a new bull phase in October 2022 and expects growth-oriented sectors like information technology, which struggled last year, to perform well in the early stages of this phase.
Ken Fisher discussed the "pessimism of disbelief" in a recent video. According to Fisher, this pessimism occurs when investors reject positive news, assuming it will eventually turn negative. He sees this type of pessimism as a positive sign for stocks since it's common at the beginning of bull market cycles.
Fisher’s 13F portfolio value increased from about $148 billion in Q4 2022 to $165 billion in Q1 2023. During the first quarter, the fund added 181 new investments to its portfolio, increased its holdings in 377 existing stocks, divested from 52 equities, and decreased its positions in 510 stocks. The top ten stock positions add up to 26.02 % of the portfolio. Some of the most popular companies included in Ken Fisher's Q1 portfolio include Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL).
Our Methodology
For this article we picked the top 10 stocks from Ken Fisher's hedge fund portfolio for the first quarter of 2023.
Billionaire Ken Fisher's top stock picks
10. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (NYSE:TSM)
Fisher Asset Management’s Holdings: $2,346,771,000
Percentage of Fisher Asset Management’s Portfolio: 1.42%
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (NYSE:TSM) is the world's largest chip manufacturer.
In the first quarter, Ken Fisher increased his stake in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (NYSE:TSM) by 4%, and his 1.42% stake in the company is now worth about $2.35 billion. The most prominent shareholder in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (NYSE:TSM) is Rajiv Jain’s GQG Partners, with 9,197,003 shares.
Like Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (NYSE:TSM) is one of the top stock picks of billionaire Ken Fisher.
Wedgewood Partners commented on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (NYSE:TSM) in its investor letter for the Q1 of 2023.
“Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (NYSE:TSM) contributed to performance as revenues grew +27% (in USD) from the year ago quarter. Despite this strength, the Company’s customers have seen near-term weakness in demand due to Covid-19 normalization as well as the launch timing of new products. However, the Company is well-positioned to continue a long-term growth trajectory because its leading-edge capacity is being absorbed by high-performance computing applications, particularly at nontraditional integrated circuit (IC) design houses, such as Apple, Alphabet and Amazon, which have become IC-design powerhouses over the past decade. Importantly, the Company’s aggressive investment in leading-edge equipment, tight development with fabless IC designers, and embrace of open development libraries, should continue to foster a superior competitive position and attractive long-term growth.”
9. The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD)
Fisher Asset Management’s Holdings: $2,478,511,000
Percentage of Fisher Asset Management’s Portfolio: 1.5%
The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD) is a leading home improvement retailer with over 2,300 stores and a strong omnichannel network.
Fisher Asset Management started building its position in The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD) in the first quarter of 2012 and, in the first quarter of 2023, holds over 8.40 million shares in the company, valued at $2.49 billion. The company represents 1.5% of the hedge fund’s 13F portfolio.
In its Q1 2023 investor letter, Madison Investments provided a comment regarding The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD):
“The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD) provided an update on reducing the environmental impact of its stores. Since 2010, the company has reduced U.S. store electricity use by 50% by implementing LED lighting across all of its stores, buying electricity from large-scale commercial solar farms, and installing rooftop solar farms. The company is now applying its experience to other parts of its operations, including reducing electricity use in its supply chain and water use in store irrigation. Home Depot was also recognized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for being one of the nation’s largest green power users.”
8. Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD)
Fisher Asset Management’s Holdings: $2,579,321,000
Percentage of Fisher Asset Management’s Portfolio: 1.56%
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) is a semiconductor company that makes chips for various applications, including PCs, gaming, cloud services, and automotive.
On May 3, Truist analyst William Stein increased Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD)'s price target to $84 from $79, but maintained a ‘Hold’ rating on the stock. Despite the company's revenue exceeding expectations due to the upside in Gaming and Embedded segments, the analyst is concerned about AMD's weaker Q2 guidance and increasing investments in AI.
Fisher's hedge fund also strengthened its position in Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) by buying 431,867 additional shares in Q1.
In its investor letter for Q1 2023, White Falcon Capital Management provided a comment regarding Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD).
“Last quarter we added Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) to the portfolio at 18x earnings and quickly made it into a top 5 position. At that time, Mr. Market was worried about earnings revisions for semiconductor stocks. In Q1 2023, it has been one of our best performing positions with the stock up 50%! In just three months, the market realized that Artificial Intelligence (AI) and related technologies require a lot of semiconductors. Mr. Market really is manic depressive but this volatility can give the enterprising investor just enough of a window to pick stocks with attractive risk rewards.”
7. NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA)
Fisher Asset Management’s Holdings: $2,798,969,000
Percentage of Fisher Asset Management’s Portfolio: 1.69%
NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) provides graphics, compute, and networking solutions globally.
Ken Fisher is also bullish on NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) as of the end of the first quarter of 2023. His fund increased its holding in NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) by 1% in the first quarter, ending the period with over 10.08 million shares of the company.
GQG Partners, with 8,247,311 shares, is the biggest stakeholder in the company.
Baron Funds made the following comment about NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) in its Q1 2023 investor letter:
“NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) is a semiconductor mega-cap company and global leader in gaming cards and accelerated computing hardware and software. Shares of NVIDIA rose over 90% during the first quarter because of material developments in generative AI evidenced by the release of ChatGPT and other competitive models. On its fourth quarter fiscal 2023 earnings call on February 22, Colette Kress, NVIDIA’s CFO said, “AI adoption is at an inflection point.… The opportunity is significant and driving strong growth in data center that will accelerate through the year.” On the same call, Jensen Huang, NVIDIA’s CEO emphasized: “The accumulation of technology breakthroughs has brought AI to an inflection point. Generative AI’s versatility and capability has triggered a sense of urgency at enterprises around the world to develop and deploy AI strategies.… NVIDIA AI is essentially the operating system of AI systems today.… The activity around AI infrastructures…has just gone through the roof in the last 60 days. And so there’s no question that whatever our views [were] of this year as we enter[ed] this year has fairly dramatically changed as a result over the last 60, 90 days.” Indeed, our research indicates that shortages of NVIDIA GPUs3 are the biggest gating factor for AI adoption and that about 90% of AI-model training runs are performed on their GPUs. During its annual GTC conference4 in March, NVIDIA announced new products and services that expand its addressable market and together form a full AI computing platform. These included: (1) new AI training systems (where it is dominant) and inferencing systems (where the field is more wide open), such as specialized chips in the areas of large language models and recommender systems, simulation and graphics rendering, and video use cases; (2) new fully managed AI services in partnership with the major cloud service providers, called NVIDIA DGX Cloud and NVDIA Omniverse Cloud; (3) new domain-specific generative AI foundational models, branded NVIDIA AI Foundations, which NVIDIA customers can harness to build and train custom language models with their own proprietary data to develop differentiated offerings; and (4) industry-specific accelerator libraries, spanning such diverse verticals as genomics analysis and computational lithography. We continue to believe NVIDIA’s end-to-end AI platform and leading market share in gaming, data centers, and robotics (including automotive), along with the size of these markets, will enable the company to drive durable growth for years to come.”
6. Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM)
Fisher Asset Management’s Holdings: $2,801,441,000
Percentage of Fisher Asset Management’s Portfolio: 1.69%
Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) provides global Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology.
Based on the 13F holdings for the first quarter of 2023, Fisher Asset Management owns 14.02 million shares in Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) after boosting its holding by 2% from the fourth quarter of 2022. The most prominent shareholder in Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) is Starboard Value LP.
Along with Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) is one of the top stocks on the radar of billionaire Ken Fisher.
In its investor letter for Q1 2023, Vulcan Value Partners shared a comment about Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM):
“Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) was a material contributor during the quarter. The company has taken numerous positive steps to increase profitability more quickly than expected. Salesforce also improved its corporate governance by recommending three new board members. The company is focused on improving margins, deemphasizing acquisitions, and has expanded its stock buyback plan from $10 billion to $20 billion. We believe Salesforce can pursue these opportunities while continuing to increase its competitive position.”
Click to continue reading and see Billionaire Ken Fisher's Top 5 Stock Picks.
Suggested articles:
Disclosure: None. Billionaire Ken Fisher's Top 10 Stock Picks is originally published on Insider Monkey.