Soros Ups the Apple Ante, Trashes Gold

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Everyone loves to see what the “smart money” is doing with its investment dollars, which puts the spotlight on the quarterly 13F season. Every quarter, hedge fund managers and other big investors file 13Fs, which let us know what they’ve pumped and what they’ve dumped in the previous quarter.

George Soros, the eponymous head of Soros Fund Management, is one such manager who makes his holdings public, and a quick peek into the second quarter’s activity reveals some interesting moves:

Let’s Talk Tech

Soros looked to Silicon Valley for some of his highest-volume and profile moves.

For one, he looked at beaten-up Apple (AAPL) and increased his stake from 26,800 shares to 66,800, with an indicative value of nearly $33.4 million.

Soros also liked the look of Google (GOOG), increasing his stake from 337,000 shares to roughly 397,000, and also purchased 11,2000 call options.

On the other hand, Soros dumped out of Citrix (CTXS), selling off just more than 485,000 shares of the desktop virtualization provider, with his stake now set at 100,000. The stock sold off by more than 15% during the second quarter.

Hedging Bets with Bill Ackman

Bill Ackman is infamous for his behavior at JCPenney (JCP), and recently stepped down from the board. Still, any conversation with Soros must be pretty interesting at this point — he picked up nearly 20 million shares of JCP during the quarter, and sits with calls for another 500,000 shares. Ouch.

Of course, Soros also made another play on Ackman territory, buying just more than 5 million shares of Herbalife (HLF)? Ackman’s so mad he filed a complaint with the SEC, accusing Soros of breaking insider trading laws.

On the Way Out

Citigroup (C) joins the list of banking stocks seeing a tremendous rebound from the banking crises, but Soros dropped his stake from 544,ooo shares down to 172,000 during the quarter.

Netflix (NFLX) is another stock on the move up, rising nearly 18% during Q2, but Soros dropped his investment by 25,000 shares to 40,000.

Lastly, gold and gold miners have taken it on the chin all year, and Soros decided to bail, selling out of his entire 530,900-unit stake in the SPDR Gold Shares (GLD).

Want to see more? Click here for the complete 13F Filing.

Marc Bastow is an Assistant Editor at InvestorPlace.com. As of this writing, he was long AAPL.


Article printed from InvestorPlace Media, https://investorplace.com/2013/08/george-soros-13f-statement/.

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