Lisa M Jones’ Q4 Stock Picks: NVIDIA Corporation, Micron Technology, Inc., And Apple Inc.

Hedge fund manager Lisa M Jones is the CEO and President of the $28.42 billion Pioneer Investment Management fund. In Q4 she demonstrated a bullish attitude towards NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA) and Apple Inc.(AAPL), but 13F forms filed with the SEC reveal that she slashed the fund’s shares in semiconductor Micron Technology, Inc. (MU).

Jones is ranked #63 out of 202 hedge funds tracked by financial accountability engine TipRanks. The ranking is based on the performance of Pioneer Investment Management. The fund has been generating respectable returns of 14.71% on a three-year annualized basis, rising to just under 18.6% last year. We can see that the fund’s measured performance of 70.52% is considerably higher than the average hedge fund portfolio (51.58%), although it still falls short of the S&P 500 (84.20%).

The fund believes it has a distinctive investment approach based on a strong collaboration between portfolio managers and research analysts. The approach involves understanding buy disciplines (for example, discounted stock) and sell disciplines (target price reached, story changes, better opportunities). These are ascertained by both fundamental and quantitative research.

Now let’s see how this approach manifested in three of Jones’ key Q4 portfolio moves:

NVIDIA Corporation

Jones increased the fund’s holding in chipmaker Nvidia by 21.93% to 255,177 shares worth $27.24 million. Since the last filing date, these shares have dropped in value by 7.67% following a slight cut to EPS by the Street post F4Q EPS. Prices are now just under $100 compared to the high of $119 on Feb 3. Goldman Sachs’ Toshiya Hari says “we have spoken with a large number of investors who… remain on the sidelines given concerns around valuation, despite their positive view on Nvidia’s fundamental outlook. We recommend investors take advantage of this recent pullback.”

On the flip side of the coin, Nomura analyst Romit Shah believes that the Street is underestimating the gaming slowdown and that the value implied to NVDA’s datacenter and automotive businesses is too high. He sees better upside potential in Intel (INTC). Shah downgraded the stock to sell with a $90 price target (-8.56% downside) on Feb 23.