Goldman Sachs, according to Reuters, says AIG has replaced Apple as the favorite pick of hedge funds. Apple’s arch enemy Google is now also favored over Apple by hedge funds.
Apple has not been abandoned by hedge funds; it is now in third place.
According to Goldman’s data, hedge fund’s top holdings were reported to be 80 hedge funds holding AIG, 73 hedge funds holding Google and 67 hedge funds holding Apple.
These days the analyst community is favoring Google. Just today Google was upgraded by three analysts. Most notable was Bernstein raising its price target to $1,000 from $820. CLSA also raised its target on Google from $900 to $1,000. Deutsche Bank did not quite join the $1,000 band wagon and raised Google price target to a mere $935 from $850.
In contrast, there were no upgrades on Apple.
It is understandable that hedge funds may be comparing Apple to Google, but AIG is a different story. It is an insurance giant. AIG almost went bankrupt during the financial crisis and is alive today only due to the government bailout, which it has since repaid.
I have been bullish on AIG and started accumulating the stock at $22.26. As of this writing, it is trading at around $37.44...Read more at Forbes