Egerton Capital liquidated its entire stake in Apple and Walgreens Boots Alliance in the fourth quarter, according to its latest 13F filing detailing its year-end holdings. The London-based hedge fund firm, which reported about $6.2 billion in U.S. equities at year-end, had halved its Apple position in the third quarter before selling the remaining shares during the December period. Walgreens was its tenth largest holding in the third quarter. Egerton also unloaded two other stocks at year-end: footwear maker Skechers USA and fertilizer maker CF Industries. On the other hand, it more than doubled its stake in Microsoft, making the software maker its third-largest holding. Time Warner Cable and Southwest Airlines remain the firm’s first and second largest holdings, respectively.
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Marshall Wace, which manages $10.6 billion in U.S. equities, boosted its bet on pharmaceutical stocks in the fourth quarter. The London-based firm nearly tripled its stake in drug maker Bristol-Myers Squibb, which is now the firm’s third-largest U.S. long. It also boosted its stake in Pfizer, another drug maker, by more than 50 percent, making the stock the sixth-largest holding. Animal medicine and vaccine maker Zoetis remained the largest holding for the fourth straight quarter and the fifth in the past seven quarters. In the two other quarters in this stretch Zoetis was the second-largest long. On the other hand, Marshall Wace cut its position in Allergan by 25 percent, making the drug maker the seventh-largest holding, down from third the previous quarter.
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Shares of SunEdison dropped another 10 percent or so to close at $2.36, just pennies above its all-time low.
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Shares of Solar City plunged more than 29 percent on Wednesday after it reported lousy quarterly results. The stock is now down about 63 percent year-to-date alone. We won’t know for a few more days who owned the stock at year-end. At the end of the third quarter, Los Angeles-based Canyon Capital Advisors and San Francisco-based Passport Capital were among the top-ten shareholders.
