Ken Fisher is the founder of Fisher Asset Management, a financial adviser that he started nearly five decades ago. The firm oversees over $240 billion from more than 150,000 private investors.
Fisher said, "I've gone to cash three times in my career; in 1987 before the crash, before the 1990 bear market and in the early 2000s, before the dot-com crash. But I missed the 2007-2009 bear market because I didn't believe, and don't believe, mortgages could cause what they are blamed for having caused."
Besides focusing on long-term investments, Fisher also believes in spreading out investments to reduce risk. Fisher Asset Management is highly diversified, with a portfolio value of about $244 billion. While technology stocks account for 31.8% of the portfolio, the independent money management firm is also heavily invested in the services sector, accounting for 14.6% of the portfolio. Other significant holdings are in the financial services, healthcare, and basic materials sectors.
In the past year, Fisher's firm made a 32.18% return, mainly because it invested a lot in tech stocks, especially those benefiting from the AI boom. While other managers are selling tech stocks due to high valuations, Fisher's firm is buying more, especially in companies making AI chips.
Even though the overall market is at all-time highs, Fisher says there's no need to worry. He believes that just because the market is high now, it doesn't predict the future. He expects the market to keep going up as long as the economy and other key factors get better.
"Bull markets hit new highs on an ongoing basis as soon as they have recovered from the prior bear market and hit their first all-time high in that new bull market. They keep doing that over and over again and eventually you do get another bear market and then again get another bull market. Bull markets, not always, are usually significantly bigger and longer than bear markets, significantly," Ken Fisher said.
Ken Fisher's portfolio is heavily invested in the "magnificent seven" stocks, based on the belief that the stocks are well poised to continue outperforming the overall market. According to Fisher, growth stocks will continue outperforming value stocks amid the prevailing economic conditions.
"If you think the market is going up, you should expect the magnificent seven to continue to do well. Will they necessarily do better than everything? No, but they never actually did. The fact is they did better as a group than most groups you could find. I think that will continue to be the case because I am optimistic on the market as a whole moving forward", Fisher said in a video interview.
Our Methodology
We looked through Fisher Asset Management's portfolio to find Ken Fisher's top 15 stock picks for 2025. We focused on his biggest investments and ranked the stocks from smallest to largest based on the firm's stake at the end of Q3 2024.
At Insider Monkey, we are obsessed with 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).
A home improvement store overflowing with a variety of products and supplies.
The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD) is the largest home improvement store in the world. It has about 475,000 employees and over 2,300 stores in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. It sells building materials, home improvement products, lawn and garden items, and décor. A weak housing market has hurt sales, but things are getting better as interest rates drop and home sales pick up.
Improving macroeconomics was the catalyst behind The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD)'s better-than-expected third-quarter results on November 12, 2024. The company delivered a 6.6% increase in sales to $40.2 billion as net earnings came in at $3.6 billion or $3.67 a share. The company remains in a strong position amid a pent-up demand for home renovations heading into 2025.
With The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD) controlling a 28% market share in the home improvement space, it should benefit from increased house remodeling. Home improvement and remodeling should improve as mortgage rates and borrowing rates drop as the Federal Reserve cuts the benchmark rate.
Earlier this year, The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD) acquired SRS Distribution, a well-known distributor of building supplies. SRS Distribution will help Home Depot capitalize on a possible surge in new home sales and expand its exposure to the professional market, where it already has a competitive edge over rivals.
Carillon Eagle Growth & Income Fund stated the following regarding The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD) in its Q3 2024 investor letter:
“While Home Depot, Inc.’s (NYSE:HD) recent reported earnings were somewhat tepid, the market seems to be pricing in an inversion of the company’s sales, driven by lower interest rates. Home Depot reported its seventh consecutive quarter of same-store sales declines, giving back substantial gains that it enjoyed during the pandemic. High mortgage rates have also put a damper on existing home sales. People typically spend the most on home repairs and improvements in years when they buy or sell houses, often conducting both transactions in the same year.”
Overall HD ranks 11th on our list of Ken Fisher's top stock picks heading into 2025. While we acknowledge the potential of HD as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that 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 HD but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
