Don't Play Apple With Tech Peers, Use Social Media Instead

• Looking for a portfolio that includes Apple Inc. AAPL, but is not focused exclusively on the tech sector or mega caps?
• Motif Investing constantly looks for “trends, ideas and world events that could create an investment opportunity,” and then picks 10 to 30 related stocks to build portfolios around, weighing them based on their exposure to the coinciding idea, event or trend.
• The people at Motif Investing have developed an equity portfolio that provides exposure to Apple and other large companies with “lots of likes” on their Facebook Inc FB fan pages.

A Barometer For The Social Media Era

The people behind the creation of the Lots of Likes motif explained what they were thinking at the time they constructed the portfolio.

“Popularity isn’t just for angst-ridden teens. Businesses have their eye on wooing Facebook’s 1.11 billion users, who give out 4.5 billion ‘likes,’ along with more than 10 billion messages every day. Companies representing the 50 most-“liked” brands on Facebook had 1.3 billion likes as of June 2013.”

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The stocks in this portfolio represent the top 20 liked brands on Facebook. Taking into consideration that Facebook generates 8 percent of all global page views, “an aggressive social media strategy does have its advantages,” Motif expounds.

Performance And Allocation

The Lots of Likes motif has managed to beat the S&P over the past year, having returned about 18.6 percent, versus the S&P’s 2.4 percent surge. In the past month, the portfolio has risen 6.5 percent, also outperforming the S&P index, which gained only 3.75 percent.

In terms of allocation, only 18.1 percent of the portfolio’s assets are destined to technology stocks. The remaining 81.9 percent of the assets is, in fact, placed on consumer products and services stocks.

As for individual stocks, allocation goes as follows:

• 13.0 percent:                          The Coca-Cola Co KO
• 12.8 percent:                          Nike Inc NKE
• 8.5 percent:                             Microsoft Corporation MSFT
• 7.0 percent:                             McDonald's Corporation MCD
• 6.3 percent:                             Sony Corp (ADR) SNE
• 5.8 percent:                             Yum! Brands, Inc. YUM
• 4.9 percent:                             Mondelez International Inc MDLZ
•  4.3 percent:                            Starbucks Corporation SBUX          
• 3.9 percent:                             PepsiCo, Inc. PEP
• 3.4 percent:                             Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. WMT
• 3.4 percent:                             L Brands Inc LB
• 3.3 percent:                             Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN
• 3.1 percent:                             Kellogg Company K         
• 3.2 percent:                             Intel Corporation INTC         
• 3.2 percent:                             Apple Inc. AAPL
• 3.1 percent:                             BlackBerry Ltd BBRY
• 3.0 percent:                             Hershey Co HSY
• 2.6 percent:                             Unilever plc (ADR) UL    
• 2.5 percent:                             Target Corporation TGT
• 2.5 percent:                             Monster Beverage Corporation MNST

Disclosure: Javier Hasse holds no positions in any of the securities mentioned above.