- The S&P 500 and Vanguard’s Total Stock Market Index Fund have surged over 30% in 2024.
- Ken Fisher and Warren Buffett advocate contrarian and fundamental investing strategies.
- GuruFocus tracks top investors’ stock picks, highlighting 15 popular stocks among gurus.
Everyone thinks they’re a stock picker when the market has been on an upward rip. Even broad market indexers are having a good time.
The S&P 500 is up by almost 34% in the last 12 months. Meanwhile, Vanguard’s Total Stock Market Index Fund (VTI), which tracks the full range of investible US stocks, is up by 32% for the same period.
But what happens when things start to pull back, because they ultimately do? The stock market has boom-and-bust cycles and periods of sector rotations. Those who have been investing for a while know it’s best not to stitch your wagon with the crowd if you want to skip some of that volatility and even beat the market.
It’s why billionaire investor Ken Fisher takes a contrarian approach. But it’s not as simple as going against the crowd. According to his book, “Beat the Crowd,” a savvy investor should have the insight to cut through the noise to see clearly. At the center of his philosophy is avoiding the pitfalls of chasing headlines, making decisions based on political ideologies, and extrapolating, among other things.
As for one of the richest people on the planet, Warren Buffett, he cuts out noise by focusing on the fundamentals of the business and its management team, an approach he has remained faithful to for decades. He’s pegged as a value investor because he hunts for strong, undervalued companies with a competitive advantage. He buys them and then lets time take its course as the rest of the market slowly realizes what he has.
Some have taken to copying the so-called investing gurus of our world. GuruFocus is a stock data platform that tracks the biggest funds and investors, and the latest details of who’s buying what. Below are 15 stocks that have seen the most number of gurus adding them to their portfolios based on the previous quarter’s 13F filings.
The platform defines “gurus” based on three criteria:
1. Long-term outstanding performance;
2. More than $1 billion under management;
3. Low portfolio turnover.
The bucket of allocators adds up to more than 140 investors and funds, including Buffett and Fisher.
