This year, the performance of Nvidia, the chip maker and artificial intelligence bet, has been surpassed by Vistra Corp., a retail electricity and power generation company.
While many hedge funds have benefited from Nvidia’s surge, they’ve missed out on gains from Vistra in 2024. Through Tuesday, Vistra’s stock is up 192 percent compared with 144 percent for Nvidia, making it the top performer among S&P 500 stocks. Vistra rose 0.7 percent on Tuesday alone after reporting earnings that beat expectations.
With nearly 300 investors, Nvidia was the sixth most-widely held stock among hedge funds at the end of the second quarter, according to the SEI Novus database. Vistra, however, did not even crack SEI Novus’s top-50 ranking, whose cutoff was 131 hedge fund owners.
However, several prominent hedge funds do have sizable positions in Vistra.
Stephen Mandel Jr.’s Lone Pine Capital was the sixth-largest shareholder as of the end of June, with more than 6.8 million shares, according to its most recent 13F regulatory filing. Vistra is the Tiger Cub’s ninth-largest position in a U.S. stock.
Dan Loeb’s Third Point is the eighth-biggest shareholder. Vistra is the multistrategy fund’s eighth-largest long position in a U.S. stock. The stock also was one of Third Point’s top-five winners in each of the first two quarters, according to the firm’s quarterly letters. Vistra was also No. 1 all year through July, say the monthly reports.
Philippe Laffont’s Coatue Management is a major shareholder as well, but the stock is only the Tiger Cub’s 24th-largest long position. Vistra is the third-biggest U.S. long for Stanley Druckenmiller’s Duquesne Family Office and the fifth-largest for Electron Capital Partners.
Several hedge fund firms that held significant stakes in 2023 unloaded their positions by year-end and missed out on this year’s surge.
The most prominent example: Oaktree Capital Management, which in 2023 sold its stake of more than 25 million shares.
GoldenTree Asset Management established a new stake of 1.68 million shares in the second quarter of 2023, but then liquidated the position over the next two quarters.