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FORTUNE — Two reports from Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs about where institutional investors placed their bets last quarter suggest that the “smart money” is not always so smart.
In a note to clients issued Friday, Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty reports that allocation to Apple
AAPL
among the top 100 investors in the stock fell last quarter to 2.0% — near the low end of its historic range of 1.6% to 4.5%. (See chart.)
“Importantly,” she writes, “Apple remains the only large cap tech name for which institutional ownership is below the S&P 500 weighting of 3.2%.”
In other words, the smart money pulled out of Apple just before the stock began a run that took it to a 12-month high of $609.85 Thursday, up 10% for the year.
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs reports that Apple was No. 2 after Google
GOOG
among the 50 stocks most-loved by hedge funds — and not necessarily as a bullish play.
Goldman, for example, is one of the 10 largest investors in Apple, with 8.4 million shares in its portfolio as of March 31. Yet its biggest Apple play last quarter was to buy 4.8 million puts, betting heavily that the stock would go down. (See The big funds on Apple: Who bought, who sold last quarter.)
“Performance headwinds from stock-picking,” Goldman wrote clients, “were compounded by poor market timing.”
Below: Goldman’s list of the dozen stocks with the largest number of hedge-fund investors.
Source: Goldman Sachs via the Wall Street Journal
