Billionaire Steve Cohen Aggressively Bought These 12 Stocks Recently

By Stock News On Jan 14, 2024 14 0

In this piece, we will take a look at the 12 stocks that billionaire Steve Cohen bought aggressively recently. If you want to skip our overview of the billionaire hedge fund boss, his firm, and the latest news, then you can take a look at Billionaire Steve Cohen Aggressively Bought These 5 Stocks Recently.

Steve Cohen is one of the richest people in the world, with Forbes estimating his net worth at $19.8 billion. The source of his wealth and fortune is the finance industry, with Mr. Cohen being known for having set up and run the hedge fund Point72 Asset Management. Mr. Cohen’s hedge fund is also one of the biggest financial institutions in the world, with its latest portfolio estimate worth coming in at $34 billion.

Point72 Asset Management itself has somewhat of a controversial history. The hedge fund traces its roots back to 1992 when it was originally set up as SAC Capital. After being set up, the fund would end up posting double digit percentage returns. But its fortunes would dwindle as an insider trading investigation would see the firm pay more than a billion dollars to the SEC and cease operating in 2014. Two years later, Point72, a separate entity, would start accepting capital from outside investors.

While Mr. Cohen is primarily in the news these days due to his sports franchise, his hedge fund has also been making big moves. 2022 and 2023 have been some of the most disruptive years for the hedge fund industry in its recent history as they have seen investors swing between traditional equities such as oil companies and high growth sectors such as artificial intelligence. Throughout 2022, the industry had to cope with the effects of high inflation on the growth sector and a re-balancing of the global oil supply chain in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Then, as it entered 2023 with calls of recession, funds had to re-balance their approach to focus on artificial intelligence as stocks like NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) raced to set record highs.

Amidst this turmoil, Point72 has been busy re-calibrating its teams to better match the changed financial environment these days. 2024 is starkly different for the finance industry as investors have to cope with an era of high interest rates and their impact on stock valuations. Higher rates drag down stock valuations as a whole, and they also make it trickier for hedge funds to utilize leverage to finance their bets. As far as Mr. Cohen’s hedge fund is concerned, it is expanding its macroeconomics teams to deal with today’s environment. According to media reports, Point72 will have 51 macro trading teams this year, with two high profile executives due to join its ranks. The growth comes after the hedge fund brought eight money managers within its fold last year to grow its macro teams to 49. Macro teams focus on broader economic trends such as inflation and interest rates, and multiple quarters believe that the era of high interest rates is perfect for this particular trading sub segment.

But what about performance? Point72 is one of several hedge funds that have lagged the S&P 500 in returns last year. Data shows that the hedge fund ended the year by posting returns of 10.6%, while the S&P and the tech-heavy NASDAQ indexes delivered 24% and 41% returns during the same time period.

With these details in mind, let’s take a look at the stocks that Steve Cohen is aggressively buying. The top three are Axos Financial, Inc. (NYSE:AX), Hibbett, Inc. (NASDAQ:HIBB), and Nevro Corp. (NYSE:NVRO).

Billionaire Steve Cohen Aggressively Bought These 12 Stocks Recently

Steven Cohen of Point72 Asset Management

Our Methodology

To make our list of the stocks that Steve Cohen is aggressively buying, we listed the stocks in his portfolio as of the third quarter of 2023 by the percentage growth in the stakes from the second quarter. Out of these, the top 12 stocks were selected.

For these stocks we have also mentioned hedge fund sentiment. Hedge funds’ top 10 consensus stock picks outperformed the S&P 500 Index by more than 140 percentage points over the last 10 years (see the details here). That’s why we pay very close attention to this often-ignored indicator.