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 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 INTL Fcstone Inc (NASDAQ:INTL).
INTL Fcstone Inc (NASDAQ:INTL) has seen an increase in support from the world’s most successful money managers lately. There were 8 hedge funds in our database with INTL holdings at the end of the previous quarter. 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 Oritani Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:ORIT), and Instructure Inc (NYSE:INST) to gather more data points.
At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 18% gains over the past 12 months, more than doubling the 8% returns enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs.
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How have hedgies been trading INTL Fcstone Inc (NASDAQ:INTL)?
At the end of the third quarter, a total of 10 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a 25% rise from the second quarter of 2016. On the other hand, there were a total of 10 hedge funds with a bullish position in INTL at the beginning of this year, so sentiment is only flat for 2016. So, let’s find out 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, Gregg J. Powers of Private Capital Management holds the largest position in INTL Fcstone Inc (NASDAQ:INTL), valued at $43.3 million in stock, comprising 6.4% of its 13F portfolio. On Private Capital Management’s heels is Brian Bares, Russell Mollen, and James Bradshaw of Nine Ten Partners, with a $31.9 million position; the fund has 11% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other members of the smart money with similar optimism include Robert B. Gillam’s McKinley Capital Management, Cliff Asness’ AQR Capital Management, and Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates. 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-micro-cap stocks.
As industry-wide interest jumped, some big names were breaking ground themselves. John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors assembled the largest position in INTL Fcstone Inc (NASDAQ:INTL). Two Sigma Advisors had $0.4 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital also initiated a $0.4 million position during the quarter. The only other fund with a brand new INTL position is Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management.
Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as INTL Fcstone Inc (NASDAQ:INTL) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Oritani Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:ORIT), Instructure Inc (NYSE:INST), and Albany Molecular Research, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMRI). This group of stocks’ market caps match INTL’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| ORIT | 14 | 47633 | 3 |
| INST | 9 | 31791 | 4 |
| AMRI | 13 | 93179 | 1 |
As you can see these stocks had an average of 11 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $51 million. That figure was $92 million in INTL’s case. Oritani Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:ORIT) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Instructure Inc (NYSE:INST) is the least popular one with only 9 bullish hedge fund positions. INTL Fcstone Inc (NASDAQ:INTL) 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 ORIT might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.
Disclosure: None
