What Tech Giants do top performers like?

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (MarketWatch) � Of the four biggest Tech Giants that are most in the news these days, two aren�t even recommended by any of the top performing advisers I monitor.

And the one Tech Giant that does receive a healthy number of buy recommendations from those top performers is probably the one you would least likely expect to be popular.

These, at least, are the conclusions I reached upon reviewing a list of those stocks recommended by the greatest number of top performers. In order for an adviser to be considered a top performer, I required him to not only have beaten a buy-and-hold in the stock market over the last 15 years, but also to be among the 15 of these market beaters with the best performance over the last 12 months.

These, by the way, are the criteria I employ in my companion weekly service, Hulbert On Markets. They assure that an adviser is considered to be a top performer only if he not only has beaten the market over the long-term, but is also exhibiting some short-term momentum.

To put the popularity of our four Tech Giants into perspective, the stock that is most recommended right now by my group of top performers is Pfizer PFE �, which is in the model portfolios of six of the 15 advisers in this select group. That�s an impressive vote of confidence, since five of the 15 advisers turn out to only recommend mutual funds. In other words, six of the 10 top performers who recommend stocks currently own Pfizer in their portfolios.

Only one of the four Tech Giants comes close to being as popular as Pfizer. Here�s how they rank:

Microsoft MSFT �: Recommended by four of the top performers

Apple AAPL �: Recommended by two of the top performers

Google GOOG �: Recommended by none

Yahoo YHOO �: Recommended by none

Since the top performers pursue disparate investment strategies, it�s difficult to say what their consensus rationale might be for this ranking. But one trend seems clear: The old guard is a better bet right now than the newer kids on the block.

The two Tech Giants that garner any recommendations from the top performers, for example, came to market in the early to mid 1980s. Yahoo, in contrast, came to market as part of the go-go years of the mid-to-late 1990s, and Google came to market in 2004.

It�s not that the top performers are always predisposed to favor old over new. But one additional clue to their thinking comes from a panel discussion held late last week at the World Money Show in Orlando (which, in interests of full disclosure, I should indicate that I moderated).

The consensus of those top performers was that the stock market in 2013 will become increasingly narrowly focused, and that we should begin now to shift away from aggressive investments towards more conservative ones. ( Read my Feb. 1 column summarizing that panel discussion.)

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