The founder, managing principal, and chief investment officer of AQR Capital Management, Cliff Asness is a well-known name in the financial industry. Setting off with a $10 million commitment from a small group of investors in 1995, Asness managed to grow the Goldman Sachs Global Alpha Fund's assets to over a $100 million in a matter of months. Distinct even among hedge fund managers, Cliff Asness' investment strategies, focusing on value and momentum strategies, have produced impressive outcomes for AQR Capital over the years. As an example, AQR's flagship Absolute Return fund had a spectacular year in 2022 after declining by over 30% from its peak in 2018. It rose 43.5%, the best performance since launch in 1998. The fund saw a 16.8% increase in 2021, and 18.4% in 2023, making it the best performing multi-strategy fund among its competitors. In its latest 13F filing for Q3 2024, AQR Capital Management disclosed a portfolio value $72.4 billion in 13F securities, with a top 10 holdings concentration of 14.07%.
In his interview for the book Efficiently Inefficient, Cliff Asness talks about the similarities between judgmental (discretionary) and quantitative investing, stating that both strategies look for cheap stocks with potential catalysts to raise or lower their values. He emphasized how quants use diversification and apply models across thousands of stocks to lower the risk factor, whereas judgmental investors tend to concentrate their holdings, thus relying on in-depth company knowledge. That said, Asness admitted that quant investors do go through periods of underperformance, even with the advantages of thorough data analysis.
Bitcoin: Little More Than a Speculative Bubble
Asness has had much to say about Bitcoin over the years. According to the billionaire, the cryptocurrency remains in a speculative bubble after the post-election rally carried it over the $100,000 mark. Speaking on the cryptocurrency on CNBC's Money Movers, Asness stated the following:
“I’m on the bubble side, on net. To move me off that, you really need not a price change, but a use case. That’s what could convince me to become maybe more of a crypto person when I find any use for it, aside from speculation and criminality.”
Following a massive year-end surge following president-elect Donald Trump's victory, Bitcoin surged 120% in 2024. With hopes of a national strategic Bitcoin reserve and pro-industry deregulation, investors expected Trump to bring about a golden age of crypto. Although Asness doesn't harbor good prospects for Bitcoin, he stated that he wouldn't short the cryptocurrency either, due to the volatile nature of crypto.
Despite proponents of Bitcoin contending that the cryptocurrency is here to stay and will eventually gain widespread acceptance, Asness' criticisms highlight the absence of real-world applications outside speculative investing. He still views Bitcoin cautiously because he thinks its legitimacy as a store of value and a medium of exchange has not been established. Along with his comments regarding Bitcoin, Asness also expressed his worries about the larger U.S. stock market, stating that high cyclically-adjusted price-to-earnings (CAPE) ratios will cause equities to struggle in the upcoming years. He predicts that during the following ten years, U.S. stocks will probably provide mediocre returns, with just slight outperformance over cash.
Our Methodology
To make our list of the ten best stocks to invest in according to Cliff Asness, we ranked all the stocks part of AQR Capital Managment's Q3 2024 13F SEC filings and picked the fund's top 10 stock holdings. The stocks are sorted in ascending order of AQR Capital Management's stake value.
Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points. (see more details here).
Is Meta Platforms Inc. (META) the Best Machine Learning Stock to Buy According to Hedge Funds?
A team of developers working in unison to create the company's messaging application.
AQR Capital Management's stake as of Q3: $855.1 million
Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) is a leading technology company known for its flagship platforms—Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp—alongside its innovative advancements in augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies.
AI-powered enhancements to Meta's algorithms and user experience continue to boost ad income for the social media giant. Over 500 million people use the company's platforms each month, demonstrating the widespread adoption of its Llama AI approach. These developments put Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) in a strong position to increase its profitability over the next two years as it expands its AI infrastructure.
On January 1, Wolfe Research reaffirmed its positive outlook on Meta, maintaining an Outperform rating and a $730 price target. Analysts at Wolfe Research believe the market has yet to fully recognize the financial potential of Meta’s initiatives in video unification and Threads monetization. They project Meta’s 2025 EPS to surpass consensus estimates by 5.5%. In addition, Wolfe projects that Threads may make between $3 and $4 billion by 2026, with room for growth in the years to follow.
Hardman Johnston Global Equity stated the following regarding Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) in its Q3 2024 investor letter:
“During the quarter, we initiated one new position in Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) and had no liquidations. Management at Meta has effectively addressed concerns about investment efficiency by shifting resources from Reality Labs towards broader AI initiatives with a clearer path to profitability. We believe management has successfully articulated the benefits of this strategy, highlighting how AI is driving user engagement and advertiser productivity. This, in turn, fuels continued revenue momentum and increases the likelihood of positive earnings surprises in the future. Additionally, the parent company of the social media platform, Facebook, has recently taken positive steps to enhance safety, which suggests to us a shift towards a more proactive and responsive approach to addressing important potential challenges and concerns. Weak oversight over data privacy protection was a key reason why we sold the position in the portfolio back in 2021. Removing this governance overhang allows us to feel comfortable to enter back into the stock at a time when we believe it is poised for strong earnings growth going forward.”
Overall META ranks 5th on our list of the stocks recommended by billionaire Cliff Asness. While we acknowledge the potential of META as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that certain AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than META but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
