How Credit Suisse Group AG (ADR) (CS) Stacks Up Against Its Peers

World-class money managers like Ken Griffin and Barry Rosenstein only invest their wealthy clients’ money after undertaking a rigorous examination of any potential stock. They are particularly successful in this regard when it comes to small-cap stocks, which their peerless research gives them a big information advantage on when it comes to judging their worth. It’s not surprising then that they generate their biggest returns from these stocks and invest more of their money in these stocks on average than other investors. It’s also not surprising then that we pay close attention to these picks ourselves and have built a market-beating investment strategy around them.

Credit Suisse Group AG (ADR) (NYSE:CS) shares didn’t see a lot of action during the third quarter. Overall, hedge fund sentiment was unchanged. The stock was in 13 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2016. At the end of this article we will also compare CS to other stocks including SYSCO Corporation (NYSE:SYY), Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd (ADR) (NYSE:CHT), and State Street Corporation (NYSE:STT) to get a better sense of its popularity.

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Keeping this in mind, let’s analyze the fresh action regarding Credit Suisse Group AG (ADR) (NYSE:CS).

What does the smart money think about Credit Suisse Group AG (ADR) (NYSE:CS)?

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 13 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 0% from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in CS 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.

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Masters Capital Management, led by Mike Masters, holds the largest position in Credit Suisse Group AG (ADR) (NYSE:CS). Masters Capital Management has a $34.4 million call position in the stock, comprising 0.7% of its 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is also Masters Capital Management with a regular stock holding of a $26.3 million position. Remaining hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish encompass Renaissance Technologies, one of the largest hedge funds in the world, Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management and Himanshu H. Shah’s Shah Capital Management. We should note that Shah Capital Management is 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.

Now that we’ve mentioned the most bullish investors, let’s also take a look at some funds that cut their entire stakes in the stock during the third quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital cut the largest investment of the 700 funds tracked by Insider Monkey, comprising an estimated $2.6 million in stock. D E Shaw, one of the biggest hedge funds in the world, also said goodbye to its call options, about $1.2 million worth.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Credit Suisse Group AG (ADR) (NYSE:CS) but similarly valued. We will take a look at SYSCO Corporation (NYSE:SYY), Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd (ADR) (NYSE:CHT), State Street Corporation (NYSE:STT), and Tata Motors Limited (ADR) (NYSE:TTM). This group of stocks’ market caps are similar to CS’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 23.25 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1.3 billion. That figure was merely $123 million in CS’s case. SYSCO Corporation (NYSE:SYY) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd (ADR) (NYSE:CHT) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. Credit Suisse Group AG (ADR) (NYSE:CS) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. This is a slightly negative signal and we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard SYY might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.