Hedge funds’ favorite stocks outperformed the S&P 500 by about one and a half times in the second quarter.

The 20 most widely held stocks as of March 31 were up by an average of 15.3 percent from April through June, compared with 10.6 percent for the broadly followed benchmark. The preferred-stock group did lag the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite, which surged nearly 18 percent. 

The group’s stellar performance is an indication of the strong results that hedge funds may wind up reporting for the period.

All but four of the 20 stocks were in the black in the second quarter, most up by double-digit rates. Of the four losers, UnitedHealth dropped more than 40 percent for the quarter, single-handedly bringing down the overall average by about 2 percentage points. The other losers were iPhone maker Apple, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, and drug giant Eli Lilly.

The top performer was chip giant Broadcom, which surged nearly 65 percent. At the end of the first quarter, the stock was the sixth-largest stock long position of Two Sigma Advisors after the firm boosted its stake by about 170 percent.

Chip giant Nvidia was the second-best performer among the hedge fund favorites, gaining nearly 46 percent in the second quarter. Two Sigma was also a major investor in that stock, counting it as its second-largest U.S. long. In fact, many of the top performers among the hedge fund favorites were major Two Sigma positions — including Microsoft, up 32.5 percent, and Amazon, up 15.3 percent.

At the end of the first quarter, Nvidia was the largest U.S. long position of Hound Partners and the second largest of Maverick Capital.

Here are the 20 most widely held stocks among hedge funds as of the end of the first quarter, as identified by SEI, along with Institutional Investor's calculations of how the stocks performed in the second quarter.

Amazon  up 15.3 percent

Microsoft   up 32.5

Meta Platforms   up 28

Alphabet “C”   up 13.5

Nvidia   up 45.8

Apple   down 7.7 percent

Alphabet “A”   up 13.5

Visa   up 1.3

JPMorgan Chase   up 18.2

Mastercard   up 2.5

Broadcom   up 64.6

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing   up 36.4

UnitedHealth   down 40.4

Netflix   up 43.7

Berkshire Hathaway   down 8.8

Eli Lilly   down 5.6

SPDR S&P 500 ETF up 10.5

Bank of America   up 13.7

Salesforce   up 1.6

Uber Technologies up 28