Is Douglas Dynamics Inc (PLOW) A Good Stock To Buy?

The Insider Monkey team has completed processing the quarterly 13F filings for the September quarter submitted by the hedge funds and other money managers included in our extensive database. Most hedge funds have been producing disappointing net returns in recent years, however that was partly due to the poor performance of small-cap stocks in general. Well, small-cap stocks finally turned the corner and have been beating the large-cap stocks by more than 10 percentage points over the last 5 months.This means the relevancy of hedge funds’ public filings became inarguable, as they may reveal numerous high-potential stocks. The following article will discuss the smart money sentiment towards Douglas Dynamics Inc (NYSE:PLOW) .

Douglas Dynamics Inc (NYSE:PLOW) shares didn’t see a lot of action during the third quarter. Overall, hedge fund sentiment was unchanged. The stock was in 11 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2016. At the end of this article we will also compare PLOW to other stocks including Corcept Therapeutics Incorporated (NASDAQ:CORT), Quidel Corporation (NASDAQ:QDEL), and INTL Fcstone Inc (NASDAQ:INTL) to get a better sense of its popularity.

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.

With all of this in mind, let’s view the new action encompassing Douglas Dynamics Inc (NYSE:PLOW).

How are hedge funds trading Douglas Dynamics Inc (NYSE:PLOW)?

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2016, a total of 11 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 PLOW over the last 5 quarters. With hedgies’ capital changing hands, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes substantially (or already accumulated large positions).

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Renaissance Technologies, one of the biggest hedge funds in the world, holds the most valuable position in Douglas Dynamics Inc (NYSE:PLOW). Renaissance Technologies has a $4.9 million position in the stock, comprising less than 0.1% of its 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Richard Driehaus of Driehaus Capital, with a $4.4 million position; 0.1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Remaining members of the smart money that hold long positions include Louis Navellier’s Navellier & Associates, John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors and Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management. We should note that none of these elite funds are among our list of the 100 best performing elite funds which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-microcap stocks.

Judging by the fact that Douglas Dynamics Inc (NYSE:PLOW) has witnessed neutral interest from hedge fund managers, it’s easy to see that there exists a select few hedgies who were dropping their entire stakes by the end of the third quarter. At the top of the heap, Peter Algert and Kevin Coldiron’s Algert Coldiron Investors dumped the largest stake of all the hedgies studied by Insider Monkey, comprising about $0.7 million in stock, and Neil Chriss’s Hutchin Hill Capital was right behind this move, as the fund sold off about $0.6 million worth of shares.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Douglas Dynamics Inc (NYSE:PLOW) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Corcept Therapeutics Incorporated (NASDAQ:CORT), Quidel Corporation (NASDAQ:QDEL), INTL Fcstone Inc (NASDAQ:INTL), and Oritani Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:ORIT). This group of stocks’ market values match PLOW’s market value.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 10.5 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $48 million. That figure was $19 million in PLOW’s case. Oritani Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:ORIT) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Quidel Corporation (NASDAQ:QDEL) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. Douglas Dynamics Inc (NYSE:PLOW) 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 ORIT might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.