Five Top Hedge Fund Managers and Their Holdings

Date: Monday, December 4, 2006
Author: Andrew Bary, Barrons Summary

Summary: Barron's identifies five top-notch hedge funds whose investment moves are closely watched by the industry, revealing their top holdings and some recent transactions:

David Tepper's Appaloosa Fund: (1) Oracle Corp. (ORCL) (2) Micron Technology Inc. (MU) (3) Applied Materials Inc. (AMAT). Other big holdings: Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), Texas Instruments Inc. (TXN), NASDAQ 100 Trust Shares ETF (QQQQ), AMR Corp. (AMR), UAL Corp. (UAUA), and Continental Airlines Corp. (CAL). Notes tech stocks aren't the bargains they were earlier in the year.
David Einhorn's Greenlight Fund: (1) Ameriprise Financial Inc. (AMP) (2) Microsoft (3) Hospira Inc. (HSP). In May Einhorn talked about his affinity for Microsoft, saying that buying Microsoft at $23 was like getting Alex Rodriguez for a merely average price in a fantasy-baseball draft

Steve Mandel's Lone Pine Capital Fund: (1) Brookfield Asset Management Inc. (BAM) (2) Google Inc. (GOOG) (3) Comcast Corp. (CMCSA). Mandel cut his Google position by 25% in Q3, suggesting it may be getting too rich for him. He added to Comcast and Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM), sold Research In Motion Ltd. (RIMM) and America Movil SA de CV (AMX), and established a position in Schlumberger Ltd. (SLB).

Ed Lampert's ESL Investment: (1) Sears Holdings Corp. (SHLD) (2) AutoZone Inc. (AZO) (3) AutoNation Inc. (AN). The three comprise Sears Holdings' CEO's entire portfolio. Barron's says many hedge-fund managers own Sears out of admiration for his retailing skills.

Activist investor Carl Icahn: (1) Time Warner Inc. (TWX) (2) ImClone Systems Inc. (IMCL) (3) American Railcar Industries (ARII).