Tilson Puts His Kids' College Savings Into Just Five Stocks

(Bloomberg) -- Former hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson is confident enough in his investing abilities that he's included just five stocks in his children's college-savings portfolios.

In an email last night, Tilson outlined his strategy for the accounts: 50 percent in Berkshire Hathaway Inc., 25 percent in real estate company Howard Hughes Corp., and 25 percent “evenly split” among Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc. and Facebook Inc. (or three of the five members of FAANG). He even posted new slide presentations to further explain his theses on two of the stocks.

For Berkshire, a company of which Tilson has long been a fan, he said he expects 87-year-old CEO Warren Buffett to run the show for at least five more years and added that shares are trading 10 percent below their intrinsic value. On Alphabet, he admitted that his skeptical call on the company years ago was his “worst call ever,” and now sees it as “one of the greatest businesses on Earth.”

Tilson closed his hedge fund, Kase Capital Management, in September due to poor returns, saying at the time that he doesn't plan to manage other people's money. He started a new business called Kase Learning at the end of the year to educate others on investing.

To contact the reporter on this story: Arie Shapira in New York at ashapira3@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chris Nagi at chrisnagi@bloomberg.net, Joanna Ossinger, Randall Jensen

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