$23.5B East Setauket hedge fund cuts Google, Apple

East Setauket-based Renaissance Technologies, the world's biggest quant fund with $23.5 billion in holdings, disclosed Monday that it reduced its investments in Apple, Google and other major companies.

The fund sold all its holdings of Exxon Mobil, Verizon, General Electric, AT&T, PepsiCo, Amazon.com and Comcast.

Renaissance Technologies uses computer models to make automated trades.

Known informally as RenTec, the quantitative analysis hedge fund made the disclosures Monday in a quarterly report with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It invests in shares of about 2,600 companies.

RenTec was founded by James Simon, a former Stony Brook math professor and ex-codebreaker for the National Security Agency.

Apple is still the hedge fund's top holding, as of the report date of Sept. 30, with about 1 million shares -- a 282,000 reduction since its last public report.

The fund report also showed it owns only 107,000 shares in Google, a reduction of 446,000 shares.

Photo: Renaissance Technologies founder James Simons addresses a gathering at  the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at the Stony Brook University. (Oct. 26, 2010)