Ray Dalio’ Bridgewater Associates is Paying Attention to These 3 Chinese Stocks

Billionaire investor Ray Dalio is one of the most famous stock pickers in the world. He founded Bridgewater Associates, which is now the biggest hedge fund in the world. The fund’s total assets in management have a total worth of $138 billion. When Bridgewater pays attention to a stock, the world listens. In this article we will analyze Dalio’s famous picks from technology. We will use public data disclosed by the hedge fund as of the end of the June quarter of 2020. You will notice that Bridgewater’s focus on the quarter was mainly Chinese stocks.

Among the top picks of Bridgewater in the second quarter were JD.com, Alibaba and Baidu. Each stock is a Chinese company with huge international markets.

JD.com

Bridgewater Associates bought 990,753 more shares of JD in the June quarter, ending the period with a total of 1.3 million shares of the company. The total stake has a value of over $83 million.

JD.com is showing a strong performance as a major ecommerce player. In August, the company beat analysts’ estimates for its June quarter on revenue and EPS. JD was one of the biggest beneficiaries of the ecommerce boom in China following the coronavirus pandemic. JD is the biggest retailer in China after Alibaba. The company is also investing in Cloud, telemedicine, logistics and software. These catalysts are expected to strengthen the company even more in the future.

Alibaba

Ray Dalio is also bullish on Alibaba, one of the world’s hottest ecommerce stocks. Bridgewater Associates bought 672,442 shares of the company in the second quarter, increasing its stake in the company to $205.04 million.

In a program on CNBC in August, Mark Tepper, president of Strategic Wealth Partners, said that U.S.-China trade tensions would not affect Alibaba stock badly, as the company is posted to grow within the Chinese space.

Tepper said that Alibaba is growing faster than Amazon in China, with a variety of services including AliPay, Cloud, logistics and health. In the second quarter, Alibaba topped analysts’ estimates for both revenue and EPS. The company had 742 million annual active customers in China.

Baidu

Ray Dalio’s hedge fund increased its stake in Chinese technology company Baidu by over 250%. The fund bought 238,537 shares of the company. The stake now has a total worth of about $40 million.

In August, KeyBanc analyst Hans Chung upped his price target for Baidu to $155 from $145, citing long-term growth in AI, app engagement and revenue growth. Baidu’s Cloud platform beat Amazon, Microsoft and Alibaba for public Cloud markets, according to a report released in July.