Altimeter Capital Chairman and CEO Brad Gerstner said he has given up some chips after strong gains in technology stocks this year, but he remains bullish on companies that are re-accelerated by artificial intelligence. “All of these stocks were up significantly at the beginning of the year, and the backdrop has gotten a lot worse,” Gerstner said Tuesday on CNBC’s “Halftime Report.” “If you want to relax a little bit today, just think about where you are The first few months of the year have yielded returns of the year, which I think makes sense.” The widely followed investor revealed that he has been hedging by increasing his short positions and reducing some of his overall position size. Exposure in funds and long funds fell by 10 percentage points to 20 percentage points. “People think they’re always 100% invested. But that’s not the case, when the market is up so much at the beginning of the year and the backdrop is so volatile. I think it makes sense to cut back a little bit, so that’s what we do in our portfolio. It’s all done,” he said. As of the end of 2023, Altimeter’s top five holdings are Snowflake, Meta, Uber, Microsoft and Nvidia. Meta is up more than 32% in 2024, while Nvidia is up another 84% this year. Billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller also said he cut a big bet on chipmaker Nvidia earlier this year, adding that the rapid boom in artificial intelligence will have a negative impact on the short-term future. Guilt may be exaggerated. Gerstner noted that the macro environment has become less than ideal for investors. First, the Fed is currently expected to continue delaying interest rate cuts to combat stubborn inflation. Additionally, corporate tax rates are likely to rise as the 2017 tax cuts are set to expire, Gerstner said. “We expected six rate cuts at the beginning of the year. Now we may have zero rate cuts,” he said. “We have an election coming up, and the corporate tax rate cuts that started in 2017 may expire at the end of 2025 if not extended, and those are a big part of the S&P 500’s growth.” Gerst, a Harvard Business School graduate As he trimmed his position this year, Na clarified that he wanted to invest in some of his top stocks for the long term. “We want to be among the companies like Nvidia that are re-accelerating, companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Snowflake that we believe are re-accelerating. Only by re-accelerating… will the numbers for these companies go up and the stocks will go up. will rise.
