By Alex Oleinic
Leon Cooperman is one of the most successful investors of our generation. He is the Chairman and CEO of Omega Advisors, a hedge fund with an equity portfolio of over $5.0 billion. Some of the largest holdings in previous 13Fs have been Sprint Nextel (S), American International Group (AIG) and SLM Corp (SLM). While we don’t have Cooperman’s latest first quarter 13F, we do have a recent CNBC interview given on Thursday May 9, that can be seen here, here and here.
To satisfy the dreams of all ardent piggy-backers, Mr. Cooperman discussed some of the latest stocks he’s bullish on, and almost every pick was a surprise in some form. It’s crucial to pay attention to hedge fund managers like Cooperman, because empirical studies show that the best picks of the best hedgies can beat the market by as much as 18 percentage points a year (discover the secrets of this strategy here).
via Billionaire Leon Cooperman’s Newest Favorites: A Focus On Mobile – Seeking Alpha.
You should also note that Leon has had some dogs too. Qualcomm is one of his largest holders and has been disappointing. He is also a big shareholder in SandRidge, the troubled oil and gas company that has recently put the CEO on notice to be fired. All that said, we are long Monitise, PLC. It’s not a penny stock, it just so happens to trade below a $1 because it’s listed on the London market and this is the OTC symbol MONIF.
It’s a real company with real revenues and Visa is the largest shareholder. It seems like a no brainer to me that Visa is going to have a big say in who succeeds in the digital wallet of the future although betting against Google and Paypal might be foolhardy. Are there enough wallets for everyone? I doubt it. But this isn’t quite a level playing field and I think the closed network that Visa owns will provide a good enough edge for a scrappy upstart like Monitise. At a last resort they could sell it to PayPal or Google just to throw in the towel.