The 700+ hedge funds and money managers tracked by Insider Monkey have already compiled and submitted their 13F filings for the third quarter, which unveil their equity positions as of September 30. We went through these filings, fixed typos and other more significant errors and identified the changes in hedge fund positions. Our extensive review of these public filings is finally over, so this article is set to reveal the smart money sentiment towards Bassett Furniture Industries Inc. (NASDAQ:BSET).
Bassett Furniture Industries Inc. (NASDAQ:BSET) shares didn’t see a lot of action during the third quarter. Overall, hedge fund sentiment was unchanged. The stock was in 10 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2016. The level and the change in hedge fund popularity aren’t the only variables you need to analyze to decipher hedge funds’ perspectives. A stock may witness a boost in popularity but it may still be less popular than similarly priced stocks. That’s why at the end of this article we will examine companies such as Merus NV (NASDAQ:MRUS), Great Ajax Corp (NYSE:AJX), and Fifth Street Senior Floating Rate Corp (NASDAQ:FSFR) to gather more data points.
Follow Bassett Furniture Industries Inc (NASDAQ:BSET)
Follow Bassett Furniture Industries Inc (NASDAQ:BSET)
We follow over 700 hedge funds and other institutional investors and by analyzing their quarterly 13F filings, we identify stocks that they are collectively bullish on and develop investment strategies based on this data. One strategy that outperformed the market over the last year involves selecting the 100 best-performing funds and identifying the 30 mid-cap stocks that they are collectively most bullish on. Over the past year, this strategy generated returns of 18%, topping the 8% gain registered by S&P 500 ETFs. We launched this strategy 2.5 years ago and it returned more than 39% since then, vs. 22% gain registered by the S&P 500 ETFs.
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Keeping this in mind, let’s take a look at the key action encompassing Bassett Furniture Industries Inc. (NASDAQ:BSET).
What have hedge funds been doing with Bassett Furniture Industries Inc. (NASDAQ:BSET)?
Heading into the fourth quarter of 2016, a total of 10 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 0% from the second quarter of 2016. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards BSET over the last 5 quarters. So, let’s examine which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates has the most valuable position in Bassett Furniture Industries Inc. (NASDAQ:BSET), worth close to $21 million, accounting for 0.1% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by GAMCO Investors, led by Mario Gabelli, holding a $12.5 million position; the fund has 0.1% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other hedge funds and institutional investors that hold long positions comprise Renaissance Technologies, one of the largest hedge funds in the world, Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management and Peter Algert and Kevin Coldiron’s Algert Coldiron Investors. We should note that none of these hedge funds are among our list of the 100 best performing hedge funds which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-microcap stocks.
Earlier we told you that the aggregate hedge fund interest in the stock was unchanged and we view this as a negative development. Even though there weren’t any hedge funds dumping their holdings during the third quarter, there weren’t any hedge funds initiating brand new positions. This indicates that hedge funds, at the very best, perceive this stock as dead money and they haven’t identified any viable catalysts that can attract investor attention.
Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Bassett Furniture Industries Inc. (NASDAQ:BSET) but similarly valued. These stocks are Merus NV (NASDAQ:MRUS), Great Ajax Corp (NYSE:AJX), Fifth Street Senior Floating Rate Corp (NASDAQ:FSFR), and Syneron Medical Ltd. (NASDAQ:ELOS). This group of stocks’ market values resemble BSET’s market value.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| MRUS | 5 | 32514 | -1 |
| AJX | 4 | 17569 | -2 |
| FSFR | 3 | 1741 | -3 |
| ELOS | 13 | 97958 | -1 |
As you can see these stocks had an average of 6.25 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $37 million. That figure was $53 million in BSET’s case. Syneron Medical Ltd. (NASDAQ:ELOS) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Fifth Street Senior Floating Rate Corp (NASDAQ:FSFR) is the least popular one with only 3 bullish hedge fund positions. Bassett Furniture Industries Inc. (NASDAQ:BSET) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard ELOS might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.
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