Today is the Sohn Investment Conference in New York, where many of the top billionaire investors and hedge fund managers give their outlook on the stock market, the economy and talk about their favorite long and short picks.
Billionaire Larry Robbins, who kicks off the conference as first speaker, has made several lucrative bets on healthcare stocks in recent years.
We followed Robbins into one of his highest conviction, small cap, healthcare stocks in our premium service, Forbes Billionaire’s Portfolio. Robbins runs the $10 billion hedge fund Glenview Capital Management. Glenview Capital has produced almost 20% annualized returns (before fees) since 2000. That’s $5 for every dollar produced by the S&P 500 over the same period.
He famously bet that Obamacare would cause a boon for hospital and insurance stocks. In fact, Robbin’s Obamacare wager is widely considered one of the most profitable trades of the past decade. Glenview has made (both realized and paper gains) more than $3 billion in profits after buying up hospital and insurance stocks since 2012.
This hugely profitable bet made Robbins a billionaire and has catapulted his hedge fund to one of the best performing hedge funds over the past 5 years. In 2013 he posted a 101% return.
Like many of the other activists or billionaire investors Robbins’ edge is control. He takes big stakes in companies and he wants board seats. As you probably recognize, this is common practice for the best billionaire investors in the world. Control equals edge. And you must have an edge in markets to generate outsized returns (i.e. returns above and beyond what the broad market gives you – which is about 8% over the long run).
Today at Sohn, Robbins reiterated his bullish healthcare theme. He reiterated his long positions in Abbvie (ABBV), saying it’s even a better opportunity today than it was last year. Robbins also said that Brookdale Senior Living (BKD) ,which is one of the largest operators of senior and assisted living homes, should not be down as much as it is (Brookdale is down 50% over the last year). These were the two stocks he discussed last year but haven’t done well over the past month. With that, you have a chance to buy Robbins on the dip.
He wrapped up his presentation today talking about
The top 5 Holdings of billionaire Larry Robbins and Glenview Capital Management are: Humana (HUM) 8%, Monsanto (MON) 7%, Cigna Corp (CI) 6%, HCA Holdings (HCA) 5.5%, Thermo Fisher Scientific (TMO) 5%.
Tomorrow we want to talk about a few more presenters at this year’s Sohn conference. Among them, billionaire Stan Druckenmiller, the legendary right hand man of the macro investing pioneer George Soros. Druckenmiller had a lot of company a couple of years ago at the conference when he criticized the Fed for trying to solve the world’s problems with monetary policy – staying too easy for too long. He hasn’t always been right, but he continues to be quite bearish on the world.
Join us here to get all of our in-depth analysis on the bigger picture, and our carefully curated stock portfolio of the best stocks that are owned by the world's best investors.
