Top Picks from George Soros: WMT, NTAP, EQT, GE, GLD, SFLY, DIS, CLX

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Aug 15, 2012
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Billionaire investor George Soros is not only good at macro picture, his understanding of business also makes him a great stock picker. His latest portfolio reveals some of his largest purchases in quality large caps and gold.

For the second quarter, George Soros’ largest purchase is Wal-Mart (WMT, Financial), which is now almost 5% of his portfolio. His purchase prices were between $57.77 and $68.86, with an estimated average price of $62.97. It is rare that Soros would put such a big weight into a single stock. But he has certainly been reward by this as Wal-Mart stock has quietly risen to all time high. For the past 5 years, Wal-Mart has gained 71%. Over the past 12 months alone, Wal-Mart has gained almost 50% while paying a decent dividend.

George Soros initiated holdings in Netapp Inc.. His purchase prices were between $28.61 and $46.3, with an estimated average price of $35.33. The impact to his portfolio due to this purchase was 2.1%. His holdings were 4,476,033 shares as of 06/30/2012. NetApp is a provider of innovative data management solutions that simplify the complexity of storing, managing, protecting, and retaining enterprise data. The company has a market cap of $11.98 billion; its shares were traded at around $31.42 with a P/E ratio of 17.4 and P/S ratio of 1.9. Netapp Inc. had an annual average earnings growth of 28.4% over the past 10 years. GuruFocus rated Netapp Inc. the business predictability rank of 4-star.

Soros also bought into large caps like GE, Disney (DIS, Financial), Clorox (CLX, Financial). GE stock has also recovered tremendously as the company came back from the troubles it has accumulated over the bubble years. The stock has gained almost 30%. The dividend yield is more than 3%.

Soros is bullish on Gold, too. He almost tripled his position in Gold ETF (GLD, Financial). GLD has suffered some over the past months. In the meantime, Soros also added to market Vectors ETF GDX and GDXJ. Currently all of them are traded at lower prices than Soros has paid.

As of 06/30/2012, Soros Fund Management LLC owns 167 stocks with a total value of $6.9 billion. These are the details of the buys and sells that have the impact to portfolio of more than .5%.

For the details of George Soros's stock buys and sells, go to http://www.gurufocus.com/StockBuy.php?GuruName=George+Soros

This is the sector weightings of his portfolio:

Consumer Services12.9%
Technology9.4%
Consumer Goods5.6%
Industrials5.6%
Basic Materials4.8%
Health Care3.2%
Financials3.2%
Oil & Gas1.5%
Utilities1.4%
Not Assigned1.1%


These are the top 5 holdings of George Soros

  1. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (WMT) - 4,831,800 shares, 4.9% of the total portfolio. New Position
  2. Adecoagro SA (AGRO) - 25,385,678 shares, 3.4% of the total portfolio. Shares added by 0.01%
  3. General Electric Company (GE) - 8,577,000 shares, 2.6% of the total portfolio. Shares added by 585.06%
  4. Westport Innovations Inc. (USA) (WPRT) - 4,134,546 shares, 2.2% of the total portfolio. Shares added by 40.03%
  5. NetApp Inc. (NTAP) - 4,476,033 shares, 2.1% of the total portfolio. New Position


Here is the complete portfolio of George Soros. Also check out the Undervalued Stocks, Top Growth Companies, and High Yield stocks of George Soros.