Trade Like Bill and Hillary Clinton
One of the ideas behind Stockpickr.com is to allow investors to peek inside the portfolios of the big financial guns to see what stocks they like. Although they wouldn't be considered financial gurus, the Clintons recently liquidated their blind trusts, and we took note.
The
Bill and Hillary Clinton portfolio
on Stockpickr lists the 25 largest stock holdings liquidated by the couple's blind trust, with each holding representing an investment of more than $100,000 each.
The flurry of recent news items about former president Bill Clinton and presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton's blind trust have focused on the reason why they chose to liquidate the stock portfolio: To avoid any look of impropriety. Everyone has an opinion on it, but we at Stockpickr were more interested in the actual stocks they owned.
Some of the stocks in the Clintons' portfolio were of the type that many might find surprising, for example
Raytheon
(RTN) - Get Report
,
BP
(BP) - Get Report
and
Exxon Mobil
(XOM) - Get Report
. No matter your political leanings, you might elect to contribute funds toward some of their previous stockholdings.
One stockholding that Clinton advisors say the Clintons would not have chosen themselves is
Cisco
(CSCO) - Get Report
, which, according to
The New York Times
, has moved U.S. jobs to India.
However, this network equipment manufacturer has a price-to-earnings of 24 and was recently added to the portfolio of
, a group of hedge funds run by famed trader and fund manager Louis Bacon, the signature fund of which has generated an average annual return of 24% since 1990.
Moore Capital owns several stocks the Clintons owned, including
Home Depot
(HD) - Get Report
. This home improvement retailer has a P/E of 14 and a yield of 2.4%. Another stock that Moore Capital and the Clinton blind trust both owned is
Yahoo!
(YHOO)
.
The Clinton's largest biotech holding was
Biogen Idec
(BIIB) - Get Report
, a Cambridge, Mass.-based company that develops oncology, neurology and immunology therapies. During the last two years, the stock has increased by more than 42%. This stock made a recent list of Stockpickr's
Top 10 Insider Purchases and Buybacks
because of its recently announced $3 billion buyback.
The Clintons -- or at least their advisors -- may have liked this share-buyback strategy because this portfolio also lists
Wal-Mart
(WMT) - Get Report
-- due to its $15 billion stock buyback program -- a stock that happens to be another one in the Clinton portfolio. The retail behemoth recently announced that it will cut capital spending and pare back its store growth. Wal-Mart also has received several upgrades lately and may be starting to shed some of the doom and gloom surrounding its stock.
For the rest of the 25 stocks the Clintons liquidated from their blind trust, check out the
Bill and Hillary Clinton portfolio
on Stockpickr.com.
To find out the stock holdings of the presidential hopefuls and other politicians, check out these portfolios:
- Barack Obama
- Stocks that Giuliani Partners was involved with at one point or other
- John McCain
- Dick Cheney's stocks
- Donald Rumsfeld's stocks
- John Kerry's stocks
- Top Holdings of Democrats and Republicans in Congress
- Ron Burkle's investment fund. Bill Clinton was a partner until hestepped down just recently.
At the time of publication, Altucher and/or his fund had no positions in stocks mentioned, although positions may change at any time.
James Altucher is president of Stockpickr LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of TheStreet.com and part of its network of Web properties, and a managing partner at Formula Capital, an alternative asset management firm that runs several quantitative-based hedge funds as well as a fund of hedge funds. He is also the author of
Trade Like a Hedge Fund
and
Trade Like Warren Buffett
. Under no circumstances does the information in this column represent a recommendation to buy or sell stocks. Altucher appreciates your feedback;
to send him an email.
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