A peek inside some hotshot portfolios

By Dian Vujovich

Snooping is big on Wall Street. I’m not talking criminal snooping here but the what’s-inside-someone’s-portfolio type.

Up to the minute, daily, and weekly portfolio holding activity from professional money managers isn’t really accessible to the average investor. Unless, of course, they work for a big money manager and get to see what’s bought and sold on a daily basis. But decide to spill any of those sacred beans and it couple spell trouble.

Holding things close to the vest is, after all, part of all money-related things from learning how much your neighbor really earns a year to what’s held in a private wealth manager’s portfolio.

The guts of what’s inside a mutual fund’s portfolio, for instance, vary from fund to fund. Reports about respective holdings vary too as some funds report their top holdings monthly while others do so quarterly.

Want to see a fund’s complete list of holdings and that will happen every quarter. All of which doesn’t help day traders, or wannabe copy cat investors. But it does protect those you pay– and who get paid handsomely— for managing your money by allowing them to do their money thing behind a not always totally transparent veil.

That said, no matter what the time frame, finding out what the big wigs are holding could be fun even though the data will be dated.

Goldman Sachs recently released a list of the 50 stocks that “matter most” to hedge funds. Some of the names included in it were the pharmaceutical companies, Actavis PLC, (ACT) and Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl. (VRX). And then companies such as Apple (AAPL) and Facebook (FB).

A complete list of the 50 stocks that most frequently are among the largest holdings of hedge funds from MarketWatch.com can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/pc6mqle.

Carl Icahn is a concentrated portfolio kind of guy. According to a recent SeekingAlpha story, “Tracking Carl Icahn’s Portfolio – Q1 2015 Update”, the assets in his portfolio have grown from $31.90B to $32.05B this quarter. He too likes Apple—it makes up over 20 percent of the portfolio.

With 21 holdings in the portfolio, the five largest account for roughly 75 percent of the fund’s assets and include: Icahn Enterprises (30.44%), Apple Inc. (20.48%), CVR Energy Inc. (9.45%), eBay Inc. (8.33%), and Federal Mogul Corporation (5.76%).

Read more about Icahn’s holdings athttp://tinyurl.com/o93qqas

No matter who you think is the best money manager–individual, fund family or institution—the goal for all of them is the same: To beat the index they follow.

On that note, last week the Bespoke Investment Group published a list of the best and worst performing stocks in the S&P 500. Performance was through May 23, 2015.

With a drum roll in mind, here are the three top performers: Netflix (NFLX) up 82.68 percent, Skyworks (SWKS) up 45.26 percent and Hospira (HSP) up 43.98 percent.

Think “bummer” as you read the names of worst three performing stocks: SanDisk (SNDK) down 31.36 percent, Keurig Green Mountain (GMCR) down 31.25 percent and Fossil Group (FOSL) down 28.76 percent.

To view the entire chart of best and worst performing stocks visit: http://tinyurl.com/phod2ve