The Most Popular Tiger Stocks are Missing Out on the Rally

	Andreas Halvorsen, Viking Global Investors (Photo credit: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg).

Investors have been euphoric since Donald Trump was elected president. While the market sold off in the days leading up to election day, it has surged ever since. However, the most widely held stocks among hedge funds with roots in Julian Robertson Jr.’s Tiger Management — the so-called Tiger Cubs, Seeds, Grandcubs and others — have fared poorly since election day.

The Russell 2000 is up about 14 percent, the Dow Industrials are up about 6 percent and the S&P 500 is up 4.8 percent. By comparison, ten of the 14 mostly popular stocks within this group entering the fourth quarter are down since election day. And three of the four that are not losing money are either flat or up slightly, significantly lagging the overall market.

What’s more, since the beginning of the quarter, ten of the 14 stocks — but not the same ten — are in the red. The ranking of the most popular Tiger-related stocks was compiled by New York-based portfolio intelligence platform Novus.

So why have the Tiger stocks been performing so poorly since election day? As is usually the case, the most popular holdings are primarily either technology or internet stocks, many of them big movers for the past few years. The thought is that many investors unloaded these stocks and took profits to buy the infrastructure, financials and drug stocks (until Trump short-circuited that rally Wednesday) that have been leading the market since election day on the belief that Trump will ramp up infrastructure spending and cut taxes.

Also, many tech companies would be hurt by at least two Trump stump proposals: launching a trade war with China and punishing companies with tariffs if they import products made overseas. Several tech companies fall into these categories, including Apple, which is held by 11 Tiger-related funds.

Three of the four most popular stocks among the Tiger crowd are among the so-called FANG stocks — Facebook, Amazon.com and Google, now called Alphabet. (Not on that list is Netflix, the “N” in FANG.)

Facebook is held by 25 Tiger funds and Amazon.com by 21, while Alphabet’s Class C shares are held by 18 funds. Each of these three stocks is down in the low-to –mid-single digits since election day. They are also all down since the beginning of the quarter.

In fact, they were the three largest long positions of O. Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global Investors, at the end of the third quarter. Little surprise, then, that Viking Global Equities, the firm’s long-short fund, was down 1.4 percent in November and is now down 3.5 percent for the year.

Seven of Tiger Global Management’s eight largest U.S. long positions are among the 14 most popular Tiger stocks. Two of those seven stocks are up since election day: Charter Communications is up 8.4 percent and FleetCor Technologies is up 2.3 percent. Apple is flat. FleetCor sank more than 14 percent in the quarter during the days leading up to election day, however. So, just two of the seven stocks held by Tiger Global and widely held by other Tiger-related funds are in the black for the quarter to date.

Not surprisingly, Tiger Global’s long-short funds slipped another 0.60 percent in November and are now down 15 percent for the year, setting up what will most likely be a big losing year.

The three worst-performing stocks among those most widely held by Tiger funds since election day are Constellation Brands, down 10 percent; Alibaba Group Holdings, down 8.8 percent; and Liberty Global, down 8 percent.