Asian flew: Hedge funds dump tech

Prominent hedge fund managers sold out of Chinese technology stocks and dumped Silicon Valley giants like Apple and Facebook while global stock markets cratered during the fourth quarter, according to securities filings released on Thursday.

Activist hedge fund Jana Partners sold out of its position in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding and reduced its stake in Apple by approximately 175,000 shares, slicing its position in the company by 63 percent.

Third Point LLC sold all of its shares of Alibaba and streaming giant Netflix, while reducing its stake in payments company Visa by approximately 200,000 shares, or about 11 percent of its prior position.

Omega Advisors, run by billionaire Leon Cooperman, sold all of its approximately 88,000 shares of Facebook and reduced its stake in Google-parent Alphabet by approximately a third by selling approxi- mately 47,600 shares.

The moves came during a volatile fourth quarter in which fears of slowing economic growth pushed the US benchmark index S&P 500 to the brink of a bear market while stock indexes in China and Germany finished the year down 20 percent or more.

Since then, shares have sharply rebounded on a broad global rally powered by hopes of a new trade deal between the US and China and the Federal Reserve’s decision to slow its pace of interest rate hikes.

Alibaba is up nearly 23 percent since the start of January, while Netflix is up nearly 34 percent over the same time. Those gains helped power the average hedge fund in January by the largest monthly gain since September 2010, according to Hedge Fund Research.

Hedge fund managers added new positions in companies ranging from Mastercard to Salesforce.com.