market folly

Stephen Mandel's hedge fund Lone Pine Capital just filed a 13G with the SEC regarding Lincare Holdings (LNCR). Due to portfolio activity on July 16th, 2010 Lone Pine has disclosed a 6.4% ownership stake in LNCR with 6,244,817 shares. This is a brand new position for Mandel because he previously did not own any shares when we looked at Lone Pine's portfolio. In terms of other activity, we highlighted late last month that Lone Pine had boosted its position in Estee Lauder (EL).

Named after a historical tree at his alma mater (Dartmouth College), Mandel founded Lone Pine Capital after serving at Julian Robertson's Tiger Management. Typically, Mandel seeks to identify companies with good management teams that are trading below intrinsic value. While they've had a successful past, Lone Pine is struggling a bit this year thus far performance wise. According to Institutional Investor, "Lone Cypress, his long-short fund, was off about 3.6 percent while Lone Cascade, his long-only fund, was down about 4.6%." This is in contrast to 2009, where their Lone Cypress fund was up 17.7% as detailed in our hedge fund performance numbers post.

Taken from Google Finance, Lincare Holdings is "a provider of oxygen and other respiratory therapy services to patients in the home. Its customers suffer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), such as emphysema, chronic bronchitis or asthma, and require supplemental oxygen or other respiratory therapy services. Lincare also provides a variety of durable medical equipment (DME) and home infusion therapies in certain geographic markets."

For more from hedge fund Lone Pine Capital, head to the list of Stephen Mandel's investments.