JNJ Overtakes GE as Tops with the Pros

With essentially all the Pro portfolios from the end of Q3 now available at tickerspy, we can head on over to Ideas & Research and take a look at what the data is telling us.

We noted recently that GE (GE) had overtaken Apple (AAPL) as the most tracked stock among tickerspy members.  Among the Pros, however, GE has been slipping.  It had previously been the top stock, but at the end of Q3 Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) became the top Pro stock (by just one, so it’s possible that any late filing Pros will throw GE back in to the lead.)

GE is the bluest of blue chips, so why has it fallen from the top spot among the Pros?  It’s impossible to know for sure, but in the aggregate, we can take a few guesses.

As the market turmoil hit hard in September, every stock with exposure to the financial sector fell under suspicion.  Thanks to its GE Capital business, GE was not immune to these concerns and some of the Pros may have decided to cut back their holdings.  JNJ, meanwhile, has held up remarkably well thanks to limited exposure to the financial sector and a portfolio of healthcare products that is regarded as recession proof.

Secondly, while GE’s loss of the top spot may have to do with the fact that quite a few Pros were trimming their exposure, the steep decline in GE’s share price during the quarter also contributed.  We only show Pros’ top-15 holdings on tickerspy, so if the price decline during Q3 caused GE to slip out of a Pro’s top-15 holdings, we count that as a “Pro Holder Remove.”  During Q3, JNJ fell by about -5% while GE stock dropped by about -27%.

The rest of the Pro favorites top five for Q3 is Exxon Mobile (XOM), Procter & Gamble (PG), and Microsoft (MSFT).

Tags: AAPL, GE, JNJ, MSFT, PG, XOM