ClearBridge Investments, an investment management company, released its “ClearBridge Growth Strategy” third quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. Signs of inflation cooling, and an ambitious Federal Reserve rate-cutting cycle led to broad equity market gains in Q3, primarily driven by smaller capitalization companies. In the quarter value shares outperformed with the Russell Midcap Value increasing 10.08% compared to the Russell Midcap Growth Index’s 6.54% gain. Against this backdrop, the strategy underperformed the Russell Midcap Growth Index benchmark. Idiosyncratic headwinds across a few of the Strategy's holdings hindered performance. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.

ClearBridge Growth Strategy highlighted stocks like MSCI Inc. (NYSE:MSCI) in its Q3 2024 investor letter. MSCI Inc. (NYSE:MSCI), provides critical decision support tools and solutions for the investment community. The one-month return of MSCI Inc. (NYSE:MSCI) was 6.20%, and its shares gained 14.08% of their value over the last three months. On October 8, 2024, MSCI Inc. (NYSE:MSCI) stock closed at $596.83 per share with a market capitalization of $46.911 billion.

ClearBridge Growth Strategy stated the following regarding MSCI Inc. (NYSE:MSCI) in its Q3 2024 investor letter:

"Our second financials buy was MSCI Inc. (NYSE:MSCI), an industry leader with defensible positions in the attractive index, ESG ratings and analytics markets. We believe the company can deliver sustained double-digit profit growth aided by strong demand for custom/specialized indexes, ongoing growth in passive assets and sustainability-focused products as well as robust pricing power. We are also attracted to MSCI’s largely recurring revenues, impressive retention rates, strong incremental margins and proven management team."

A successful portfolio manager working on a laptop in a large office with a city view, representing the success of the company in the financial sector.

MSCI Inc. (NYSE:MSCI) is not on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 47 hedge fund portfolios held MSCI Inc. (NYSE:MSCI) at the end of the second quarter which was 53 in the previous quarter. MSCI Inc. (NYSE:MSCI) reported earnings per share growth of 12% and organic revenue growth of 10% in the second quarter 2024. While we acknowledge the potential of MSCI Inc. (NYSE:MSCI) as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is as promising as NVIDIA but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.f