so Citadel is of course one of the largest hedge funds in the entire world in fact Investopedia currently ranks them as the number one largest being led by founder and current CEO Ken Griffin who first started trading stocks from his dorm room in Harvard as a 19-year-old sophomore before creating Citadel just 3 years later having now grown it to an entity that really holds hundreds of billions of dollars in assets so it's absolutely wild just how big and large they've become over time anyway fast forward to today and Citadel is constantly being talked about in the investing World sometimes even for controversial reasons as the founder is actually uh the owner of both Citadel advisors the hedge fund as well as Citadel Securities which is one of the largest market makers in the world providing liquidity to the market while also holding tons of buy and sell information that could theoretically be used as an Insider information for the hedge fund now I'm not saying that they do any of that and I have no knowledge of them ever doing anything illegal but it's something that has been talked about in the investing Community kind of speculated over as having uh potent the potential to be a conflict of interest if it were to ever be used inappropriately again I'm not saying that they do that I have no information about any of this but what I do know is that last quarter Citadel being again the largest hedge Fone out there uh made some giant stock purchases these were increases here of hundreds and even thousands of percents to their positions and the only reason that I know any of that is because they have to release it to the public every quarter so in today's video we'll be running through the five largest of those purchases I'll share of course my opinion on each one of them and I'll even rank them from best to worst two base on that opinion so hit that like button if you're enjoying my videos it really helps keep my channel alive so thank you so much for that support let's go ahead and jump straight into this list all right now we'll be sorting these from smallest to largest position in the portfolio among these stocks here that we're talking about with purchase number one actually being a pharmaceutical giant that I happen to own myself too in Bristol Meyers squib ticker symbol BM which Citadel increased their position on by a massive over 3,000% last quarter bringing the stake up to almost half a billion dollars which is still not even worth just half a percent of the overall portfolio that's how big they are anyway now the uh interesting thing really about Bristol is that the business is very large and dominant yet the stock price has fallen hard in recent years being down about 40% from the top and leaving it also negative over the past entire decade so from that perspective alone it's actually a very interesting stock that I think is worth looking into especially considering the Skyhigh dividend of close to a 5% yield it's one of the highest that it's been over the past decade as well as the dirt cheap valuation of a forward PE of only seven sector median by the way is about three times larger than that still there are several concerns most notably has been the lack of growth with sales even falling a bit in recent years too this being caused by Patent expirations and not enough new drugs and treatments to make up for it these are some of the biggest pan Cliffs that um Bristol Meers has faced in a very long time however the hope is that some new moves that they've been making recently should help the company turn things around over time and this includes some large Acquisitions of multiple different companies to help build out their already large pipeline of future products including the acquisition of karuna pharmaceuticals for a whopping $4 billion as well as Mora Therapeutics and raise bio each worth about $5 billion respectively with all three new companies also having several experimental Therapies in late stage clinical trials that could become Blockbuster drugs generating over a billion in annual revenue each in the future and already we're seeing Bristol's growth portfolio of 12 younger drugs see a rise in momentum having increased their sales by over 20% last quarter year over year which is very uh impressive it's a very good sign now time will tell how much these moves will ultimately lift the company up long term but I just think that for such a cheap valuation for a company that has also paid a dividend for over nine decades in a row and uh is really a company here that I just can't Envision ever disappearing or going away because of how big they are and how important they are to the you know pharmaceutical industry well I just feel like it's worth taking a chance on with the stock so I agree with Citadel buying the stock here at these prices and I'm going to rank it pretty high at number two because of it now moving on to purchase number two though we have a pretty uh controversial company here and stock these days which is kind of crazy because they used to be really a beloved Company by everyone until just these past few years and that is of course Disney ticker symbol D which Citadel increased their position on by over 300% bringing the stake up to over half a billion dollars now like I said this used to be a very beloved company in fact even to this day it still ranks uh number 12 in the entire world from Fortune's most admired companies it's out of any company in the entire world so it's a big honor there and uh that might be a little hard to believe though these days considering just really the poor performance that they've had in recent movies and shows that they've released that have largely flopped and really costed them many billions of dollars along the way which Speaking of even as high as Fortune does rank them well this was still a year-over-year drop of six places one of the largest drops in their history so clearly there's there is some consumer backlash going on for Disney's products these days much of which has caused the stock to crumble in price not only losing more than half its entire value from the top but it's also negative over the past decade guys that's something that uh would have really been completely unheard of in the past when talking about Disney no nobody would have ever expected uh Disney stock to perform so poorly long term now having said that some of the stock crash was also due to the heavy cost associated with turning to video streaming notably through Disney plus but also along with Hulu and ESPN plus as investors really feared that it would uh only become really a bigger drag on their already struggling profits that had taken heavy damage during the pandemic when their parks and Resorts and other things had either closed down or operated at limited capacity how ever I think both fronts could actually be seeing a turnaround in the future and so it may be the case that Citadel and other large investors too are buying in now for that turnaround potential and I know I have myself recently too I feel that if Disney can execute there is some turnaround potential there and we're already seeing some moves that could potentially be hinting towards that in fact recently Disney has started to cancel some poorly written projects that consumers were not embracing while also Al bringing back fan favorite characters and actors of the past now on the profitability front the streaming business too also uh actually turned a profit for the first time ever last quarter and that was a very positive sign yet despite these improvements here the stock continues to be punished maybe that'll continue until we see more noticeable progress in the right direction but for now I do just feel that the stock is cheap enough to where it's worth buying so I'm giving it the number two rank overall I'm going to push Bristol up one spot to fit it in just because I like Bristol maybe a tiny bit more for that attractive dividend all right moving on to purchase number three though we actually have a very interesting one here that might be a little hard to explain but that is qxo ticker symbol qxo which it looks like Citadel probably had a small amount to in the prior quarter before deciding to increase that position by over 575,000 per bringing the stake up to over $667 million now the reason I say that this one is very interesting here a bit hard to explain about it is because it's mostly a venture company that is aiming to acquire other companies for future long-term growth now several things are actually pretty attractive about this one in particular already notably that it's going after the building uh products distribution industry one that is estimated to be worth $800 billion and it's it's attempting to disrupt that industry through various Acquisitions and strategic moves offering all kinds of services within the industry especially improving efficiencies through the use of technology and software and services and other things too as well as of course mergers and consolidation something that the industry has been kind of lacking a lot of analysts have actually said that uh the building uh products industry will likely see a lot of consolidation and mergers in the future because it's so separated what's the word I'm looking for separated there's another word uh fragmented it's so fragmented now the ultimate goal of qxo is to eventually be generating tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue through the next decade and generating substantial shareholder returns in the process now this wouldn't really mean much if it didn't have some notable backing and Le leadership to kind of back up those promises but that actually is the case with qxo as the founder and CEO has a really strong track record of similar success stories in the past having not only completed more than 500 different Acquisitions throughout history but some notable examples also include his very first company which was United Waste Systems delivered 55% annual returns from when it was founded to when it was sold to the company that actually became Waste Management one of the biggest in the world he also co-founded United Rentals which also delivered Market beating returns and became the leading equipment rental company as well as XO Logistics which he acquired for $150 million only to later turn it into the seventh best performing stock of the decade on the Fortune 500 list gaining more than 3,000% and later spinning it off uh spinning off two other businesses from it that together generate over 20 billion in annual sales so just from all of that alone it does make this a very interesting stock however the problem for me is that while it does have around5 billion dollar ready to make a couple of big Acquisitions it still hasn't made any of those decisions quite yet so there's not much to look to here in terms of you know financial performance or even the stock valuation at the moment which by the way uh this stock also has zero analyst coverage on Yahoo finance so it's just too difficult of a stock for me to judge or give uh too big of an opinion on however I will give it the number three ranking regardless because it is at least uh one that has a proven CEO at the helm steering the ship and it's also seen a giant like Citadel uh buying up a ton of the stock which tells me that it's probably going to be a winner in the future if big investors are loading up on it too I'd have to do a lot more research myself though before I could even consider to buy this stock as a meaningful investment but it is one that I'm probably going to start tracking myself just cuz I do find it interesting all right that will however leave us now though with the final two purchases of the list which are also the largest of the portfolio relative to the other stocks that we've covered so far and coming in at purchase number four Well's actually going to be an ETF in the investco QQQ ETF which Citadel increased by a whopping 584 bringing the stake up to over $1.5 billion now I'll keep this short as I'm really you guys know I'm not the biggest fan of these very large broad-based Market ETFs with triple Q in particular being one that just simply tracks the NASDAQ 100 which is the 100 largest non-financial companies on the NASDAQ now that's not to say that it's a bad ETF in fact I actually think it's a very good one it's extremely large in liquid with a very low expense ratio and it has very large exposure to Tech which is my favorite area of investment with the top 10 Holdings alone also making up about half the entire ETF including some of my all-time favorites stocks like Microsoft Amazon Google and more but when it comes to ETFs you know this is a criticism that I often get from some of my viewers which is that I own too many different stocks and some of them feel that I should just own a big ETF instead but look guys in my opinion that is such a weak argument because I love to handpick my individual Investments and you know I actually talked about this in my most recent Community portfolio update video where a viewer literally mentioned QQQ this particular ETF he said that instead of my community portfolio because it's having a lot of different stocks said I should just buy Triple Q instead uh but my argument is that I don't want to make the same decisions that an ETF would make for example looking at triple Q their largest holding number one is Apple I don't want Apple to be my number one biggest holding I don't even want it in my top 10 if I'm being honest with you and speaking of the top 10 triple Q also holds Costco in their top 10 I don't even want to Costco stock to begin with so my point is that look ETFs are great for beginners or any passive minded investors that don't want to have to do a ton of hard work or constant research or maybe they want some exposure to a specific area I think foreign ETFs or ETFs focus on a specific kind of theme makes a lot of sense in many different cases but a broad-based like Market ETF no that's not something that I've ever been interested in myself I love to do the hard work I love to handpick everything it's one of my favorite things I think it's super fun I think stock market investing is incredibly fun anytime that someone tells me that investing in stocks is boring or dumb I I feel like they're crazy I don't know what they're talking about I think it's the one of the funnest things in the world I love investing in stocks and uh because of that I'm just not the biggest fan of ETFs in particular very broad-based like Market ETFs like this one just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me um but like I said it's not a bad one I'm still you know I would still consider it decent for particular people people in certain situations but I'm going to put it in last place at number four because for me it's not one that I think I'd ever be interested in all right unfortunately coming in at purchase number five it's going to be another ETF and an even one even larger one at that in the Spy S&P 500 ETF which they increased their position on by over 50% last quarter bringing the stake up to over $3 billion and yeah this one is very similar in terms of size popularity liquidity and expense ratio but the main difference is just that rather than tracking the NASDAQ 100 this one tracks the S&P 500 which is commonly referred to as the main Benchmark for the US Stock Market as it's made up of 500 of the largest companies by market cap and again I have the same feelings about this one it's a little hard to rank it up against Triple Q because I feel that triple Q is more heavily focused on Tech which I like more but that also means it has a little less diversity that spy would have so there are some pros and cons if you're trying to put them up heads up against each other it would be really hard to say which one I'd prefer but I guess my bias or preference would go a little more towards triple Q because I love Tech in general which by the way over the past decade triple Q has also risen by 374 while spy has performed about half as well now that's still very reliable performance from both ETFs but I just think I prefer triple q a little more because of that lean because of how it leans heavier into attch which has performed better I think it has more future potential perhaps so depending on how you look at it anyway I'm putting spy behind them at number five and that'll give us our overall rankings here anyway this will do it for this week's Roundup of stocks that a giant investor in spying o overall I agree with the moves here by Citadel I found them to be pretty interesting and two of them I actually own myself too so it's not a bad list by any means I think they're all pretty decent but this is how I would rank them I would love to hear what you all think do you agree with my ranking would you make any changes to it um and do you like any of these purchases do you own any of these stocks I'd love to hear your thoughts but thanks again for stopping by my friends I hope you enjoyed the video I hope you're all doing well and I will catch you in the next video all right take care everybody bye-bye [Music]