Magellan Fund Trims Some Tech Stocks

Fidelity Magellan fund manager Robert Stansky may look like a hero to his shareholders in the wake of his recent stock moves--though he probably won’t win many friends among big-name tech-stock devotees.

Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Texas Instruments Inc. disappeared from Magellan’s top-10 holdings in the third quarter and were replaced by EMC Corp., American International Group Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc.

The changes Stansky made to the $103.6-billion fund, the biggest actively managed U.S. mutual fund, were disclosed in Fidelity Investments’ October Mutual Fund Guide, published Tuesday.

“I really think he’s sort of changing the guard in terms of where he thinks the new leadership stocks in technology are going to be,” said Jim Lowell, editor of Fidelity Investor, a monthly independent newsletter.

Magellan trimmed its total number of stock holdings in the third quarter to 320 from 373.

Still, analysts cautioned that it isn’t certain that Stansky sold a large portion of his Intel and Microsoft shares. Because the stocks fell sharply in September, their value in the portfolio would have dropped anyway.

But Magellan’s overall technology weighting fell to 29.2% as of Sept. 30 from 31.3% as of July 31.

The fund is down 6.9% so far this year, versus a 7.3% loss for the Vanguard Index 500 fund, which tracks the Standard & Poor’s 500 index.