In an interview given to the Palm Beach Civic Association in January 2024, billionaire Paul Tudor Jones said that whatever happens in the US stock market in the next 12 to 24 months would largely depend on the fiscal situation and policy response of the next President of the country. Jones, who has a net worth of over $8 billion, said the stock market is not the manifestation of the economic fundamentals. Instead, according to Jones, markets represent people’s ideas and what they make of the economic situation. Paul Tudor Jones said that there’s a chance the stock market would be “here or lower” in the next five to ten years. However, the billionaire also said it’s possible that the markets would go higher from here if the next President of the US devises a better “policy response” next year.
Paul Tudor Jones Thinks AI Could Save Us From the Current "Mess"
Paul Tudor Jones also highlighted the concentration of stock market gains problem in the US and said last year most of the stock market gains came from the Magnificent Seven group of stocks which are pulling overall market returns through the roof. He repeatedly said that AI is “hugely” important when it comes to productivity gains and GDP growth in the US. He thinks AI could be the thing that would save us from the current economic “mess.”
“AI could be the knight on the horse that rides and saves us.”
What Worries Billionaire Paul Tudor Jones About AI?
But AI-related threats worry Paul Tudor Jones. He referred to a survey where close to 3,000 AI experts were asked whether they believe AI would end humanity. According to Jones, a whopping 58% of the experts said yes. The billionaire said US policymakers will have to decide how to tackle this problem. Jones believes AI is growing at an “unbridled pace” since there’s so much money to be made in the domain but the biggest problem for policymakers would be to balance the benefits and threats of AI to make it sustainable.
Jones said that he’s a macro trader who doesn’t trade a lot of individual stocks and instead focuses on trading “basket” of stocks like S&P 500, in addition to indexes in Europe and Japan. Nonetheless Jones' latest portfolio shows he has big stakes in companies like NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA), Exxon Mobil Corp (NYSE:XOM) and Salesforce Inc (NYSE:CRM). In this article we will see which stocks in his portfolio are also seeing insider buying activity.
Billionaire Paul Tudor Jones and Insiders Love These Stocks
Methodology
For this article we first scanned Paul Tudor Jones' Q4'2023 portfolio and picked 10 of these stocks which saw heavy insider buying activity over the past 12 months. But why is it important to keep tabs on hedge fund and insider activity? Hedge funds’ top 10 consensus stock picks outperformed the S&P 500 Index by more than 140 percentage points over the last 10 years (see the details here).
RNA medicines company Wave Life Sciences Ltd. (NASDAQ:WVE) is one of the stocks in Paul Tudor Jones' portfolio that saw insider buying over the past few months. RA CAPITAL MANAGEMENT, L.P., which has a director status at the company's board, bought one million shares of the company on December 11, 2023, at $5.00 per share. Since then the stock has gained about 54%.
In its Q4 earnings call earlier this month, the company talked about future expectations and progress on its products:
"We’re advancing WAVE-006 in our ongoing RestorAATion clinical program. The program is comprised of two interconnected portions, RestorAATion-1 for healthy volunteers and RestorAATion-2 in AATD for patients who have the homozygous PiZZ mutation. In addition to generating key safety and PK data, RestorAATion-1 is designed to rapidly establish a dose level and regimen that’s expected to engage target. In the RestorAATion-2, we will be taking multiple assessments of serum M-AAT through the low, medium, and high dose cohorts, which will enable us to quickly detect the potential presence of wild-type healthy M-AAT protein in serum, representing achievement of proof of mechanism.
Tudor Investment Corporation initiated a new stake in Iovance Biotherapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:IOVA) during the fourth quarter of 2023, buying $269,344 worth of company shares during the period.
On February 20, 2024, Wayne P. Rothbaum, a director at Iovance Biotherapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:IOVA) board, bought 5,000,000 shares of Iovance Biotherapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:IOVA) at $9.15 per share. The stock has gained about 22% since then.
Aristotle Large Cap Growth Strategy made the following comment about Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IOVA) in its Q3 2023 investor letter:
“We sold Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IOVA) following uncertainty which arose from the company canceling out of two investor events. Iovance is in the late stages of FDA review on their lead candidate Lifileucel in advanced melanoma. These cancellations could stem from issues with site inspections which tend to take place later in the review cycle. The company has not commented on why it canceled these investor events, and we do not think this bodes well for the prospects of a straightforward approval with a clean, positive label for the company.”
Aon PLC (NYSE:AON) ranks ninth in our list of the stocks bought by Paul Tudor Jones as well as corporate insiders. Professional services and management consulting company Aon PLC (NYSE:AON) is among the top stock picks of Jones as his hedge fund had a $38.14 million stake in Aon PLC (NYSE:AON).
On February 7, 2024, Lester B Knight, a director at Aol plc, bought 50,000 shares of Aon PLC (NYSE:AON) at $301.97 per share. Since then the stock has gained about 6%.
In addition to AON, Jones is also bullish on NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA), Exxon Mobil Corp (NYSE:XOM) and Salesforce Inc (NYSE:CRM).
“AON PLC’s (NYSE:AON) stock price underperformed this past quarter following the announcement of the company’s acquisition of NFP, a middle market insurance broker, for $13 billion. Though the deal complements Aon’s current business, it is expected to be dilutive to earnings in the near term, prompting a sell-off in the shares. We will continue to assess the merits of the NFP transaction, but it does not currently change our long-term view of Aon, which we view as a steady, durable, low-teens earnings compounder.”
Massachusetts-based biopharma company Scholar Rock Holding Corp (NASDAQ:SRRK) ranks seventh in our list of the stocks in Paul Tudor Jones’ portfolio that are also bought by corporate insiders.
Tudor Investment Corporation owns a $475,490 stake in Scholar Rock Holding Corp (NASDAQ:SRRK) as of the end of the fourth quarter of 2023.
On October 16, Srinivas Akkaraju, a director at Scholar Rock Holding Corp's (NASDAQ:SRRK) board, loaded up on 2,189,781 shares of Scholar Rock Holding Corp (NASDAQ:SRRK) at $6.85 per share. Scholar Rock shares have skyrocketed by about 98% since the date of this insider buying transaction.
In addition to SRRK, hedge funds are also buying NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA), Exxon Mobil Corp (NYSE:XOM) and Salesforce Inc (NYSE:CRM).
Paul Tudor Jones, via his hedge fund Tudor Investment Corporation, increased his stake in project management software company Asana Inc (NYSE:ASAN) by over 200% during the fourth quarter of 2023, ending the period with a $3.7 million stake in Asana Inc (NYSE:ASAN).
As of the end of the fourth quarter of 2023, 24 hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey had stakes in Asana Inc (NYSE:ASAN). Asana Inc (NYSE:ASAN) kept seeing heavy insider buying activity throughout 2023. On November 1, Asana Inc's (NYSE:ASAN) CEO Dustin Moskovitz loaded up on 237,015 shares of Asana Inc (NYSE:ASAN) at $17.50 per share. Since then the stock has declined by about 9% through March 13.
