Contrarian value investor Tocqueville Asset Management in aggregate made some big changes to its overall investments in well-known large-cap stocks.
Tocqueville bought substantially more AT&T stock (ticker: T) in the fourth quarter, while slashing positions in Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), and Amazon.com stock (AMZN).
https://www.barrons.com/articles/a-value-investor-bought-up-at-t-stock-sold-apple-microsoft-and-amazon-51579521600
Telcom industry is in turmoil. T sold it's old Southern New England Telcom (SNET) holdings to Frontier Communications and they are filing for bankruptcy. Verizon laid lots of workers off. If Elliot thinks they can win, good luck. And, sure T seems to have a healthy dividend, but if it gets frozen at the current level or worse reduced, the stock will decline (wonder if Randall increased it knowing he'd be leaving).
Also with the dividend at $2.02/year it would take 19 years to earn your investment back on a share valued at $38.38. And over the last 5 years, T's stock has only increased about 15% compared with the S&P 500 which went up over 63%. You'd have given up 48% of what you could've had.
Definitely not an investment I would make.
He is looking for more upside stocks and apparently he is hoping there more upside to att than the other stocks. He has money to burn if it doesn’t work and it has dividend so the loss won’t be too bad if it tanks. I would not bet on att ever and withdrawn all my positions and my portfolio is doing just fine.
Well, he is a contrarian investor. Possibly a bit of a hedge against a market pullback in tech stocks.