5 Best Finance Stocks to Buy Right Now According to Leon Cooperman

4. Navient Corp (NASDAQ:NAVI)

Hedge fund ownership of Navient Corp (NASDAQ:NAVI) has declined significantly this year, sliding by 73%. Leon Cooperman is going against the grain in that regard, as he added another 210,000 NAVI shares to his position during Q3, giving him a total of 3.18 million.

Cooperman was caught up in a political row over the student loan services company last year after Democratic nominee Elizabeth Warren called for a tax on billionaires which would be used to fund student loan forgiveness, which would be a big hit for companies like Navient. Cooperman called out Warren for her vilification of billionaires and called her plans “idiocy”, which prompted her to suggest Cooperman was simply looking out for his own interests as a NAVI shareholder, a company which she characterized as having cheated borrowers and used misleading and abusive tactics against them.

Navient’s education loan portfolio helped lift the company to strong Q3 results, as it earned core EPS of $0.99, topping estimates by over 20%. The delinquency rate on its private education loans dropped by 50% during the quarter to 2.4%.