It's been multiple generations since investors have contended with such a challenging year on Wall Street. At the halfway mark of 2022, the benchmark S&P 500, which is viewed as the most-encompassing stock market barometer, had delivered its worst first-half return in 52 years!

Despite this turmoil, Wall Street's brightest and most-successful money managers have remained grounded. According to Form 13F filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, most billionaire money managers were active buyers as the stock market plunged into a bear market during the second quarter.

However, sentiment was clearly mixed when it came to the FAANG stocks. By "FAANG," I'm referring to:

Meta Platforms, which was formerly known as Facebook

Apple

Amazon

Netflix

Alphabet, which was formerly known as Google

Among these industry leaders are two FAANG stocks billionaires have been buying hand over fist, as well as one FAANG they've been avoiding like the plague.

FAANG stock No. 1 billionaires are buying hand over fist: Alphabet

The first FAANG component billionaire fund managers can't seem to get enough of is Alphabet, the parent company of streaming platform YouTube, autonomous car company Waymo, and widely used internet search engine Google.

Based on recent 13F filings, a number of prominent billionaires built up their stakes in Alphabet. This includes Stephen Mandel of Lone Pine Capital, who started a nearly 3.44-million-share position during the second quarter, along with Chase Coleman of Tiger Global, Ken Fisher of Fisher Asset Management, and John Overdeck and David Siegel of Two Sigma Investments. Tiger Global, Fisher Asset Management, and Two Sigma respectively purchased approximately 2.21 million shares, 1.36 million shares, and 1.05 million shares.

Easily one of the best reasons to confidently buy into Alphabet is the company's leading internet search segment. Over the past two years, Google has commanded up to 93% worldwide internet search market share. With its closest-competitor 88 percentage points behind it, Google is able to command top-tier pricing power when placing ads on search pages. This is a competitive advantage that isn't going away anytime soon, and should allow parent Alphabet to benefit from disproportionately long periods of economic expansion.