Big-name hedge funds pile into Facebook, sell Apple shares
- Several "Tiger Cub" hedge funds acquired Facebook shares in the March quarter.
- Lone Pine, Viking and Tiger Global bought the social networking company's stock during the first quarter, according to required 13F filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The smart money is betting Facebook will not suffer lasting effects from its Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
Some of the biggest names in hedge funds bought Facebook shares in the March quarter, according to required 13F filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
CNBC used Symmetric.io, a hedge fund tracking firm, to analyze the major trading trends in filings from nearly 1,000 hedge funds in its database.
The database revealed the hedge funds that Symmetric tracked cumulatively bought more than 32 million shares of Facebook in the first quarter.
Several famous "Tiger Cubs" bought the social networking company's stock, including Lone Pine, Viking Global and Tiger Global.
"Tiger Cubs" reference hedge-fund firms founded by analysts who used to work for Julian Robertson of Tiger Management.
In the first quarter, Lone Pine added 3.3 million Facebook shares, while Viking bought 5.5 million shares. Tiger Global increased its stake by 2.6 million shares to nearly 5 million in total. Dan Loeb's Third Point also added 600,000 shares of Facebook.
Conversely, the hedge funds in the Symmetric database sold a total of 28.6 million shares of Apple in the first three months of the year.
David Tepper's Appaloosa Management sold its entire Apple stake of 4.6 million shares in the March quarter, while "Tiger Cub" Coatue sold 2.4 million shares.
The moves stand in contrast to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, which added nearly 75 million shares of Apple in the same period.