Do Hedge Funds Love Curtiss-Wright Corp. (CW)?

Hedge Funds and other institutional investors have just completed filing their 13Fs with the Securities and Exchange Commission, revealing their equity portfolios as of the end of June. At Insider Monkey, we follow nearly 900 active hedge funds and notable investors and by analyzing their 13F filings, we can determine the stocks that they are collectively bullish on. One of their picks is Curtiss-Wright Corp. (NYSE:CW), so let’s take a closer look at the sentiment that surrounds it in the current quarter.

Curtiss-Wright Corp. (NYSE:CW) was in 19 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistic is 26. CW shareholders have witnessed a decrease in support from the world’s most elite money managers of late. There were 22 hedge funds in our database with CW holdings at the end of March. Our calculations also showed that CW isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).

Hedge funds’ reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn’t keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Hedge funds have more than $3.5 trillion in assets under management, so you can’t expect their entire portfolios to beat the market by large margins. Our research was able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 79 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). So you can still find a lot of gems by following hedge funds’ moves today.

Keeping this in mind let’s review the key hedge fund action surrounding Curtiss-Wright Corp. (NYSE:CW).

Do Hedge Funds Think CW Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?

At the end of June, a total of 19 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -14% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 26 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in CW a year ago. So, let’s check out 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, Millennium Management, managed by Israel Englander, holds the largest position in Curtiss-Wright Corp. (NYSE:CW). Millennium Management has a $91 million position in the stock, comprising 0.1% of its 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Mario Gabelli of GAMCO Investors, with a $32.1 million position; the fund has 0.3% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining members of the smart money with similar optimism consist of Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management, D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw and Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Prospector Partners allocated the biggest weight to Curtiss-Wright Corp. (NYSE:CW), around 1.02% of its 13F portfolio. Value Holdings LP is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.48 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CW.

Due to the fact that Curtiss-Wright Corp. (NYSE:CW) has experienced bearish sentiment from the smart money, we can see that there exists a select few hedge funds that elected to cut their positions entirely last quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Brandon Haley’s Holocene Advisors cut the largest stake of the 750 funds tracked by Insider Monkey, valued at close to $1.8 million in stock. Renaissance Technologies, also said goodbye to its stock, about $1.4 million worth. These moves are important to note, as total hedge fund interest fell by 3 funds last quarter.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Curtiss-Wright Corp. (NYSE:CW). We will take a look at Agree Realty Corporation (NYSE:ADC), Amyris Inc (NASDAQ:AMRS), Hamilton Lane Incorporated (NASDAQ:HLNE), Canada Goose Holdings Inc. (NYSE:GOOS), TeleTech Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTEC), Webster Financial Corporation (NYSE:WBS), and FireEye Inc (NASDAQ:FEYE). This group of stocks’ market values match CW’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 18.3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $247 million. That figure was $206 million in CW’s case. FireEye Inc (NASDAQ:FEYE) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Canada Goose Holdings Inc. (NYSE:GOOS) is the least popular one with only 10 bullish hedge fund positions. Curtiss-Wright Corp. (NYSE:CW) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CW is 47.6. Stocks with higher number of hedge fund positions relative to other stocks as well as relative to their historical range receive a higher sentiment score. Our calculations showed that top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 24% in 2021 through October 22nd and still beat the market by 1.6 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on CW as the stock returned 11.6% since the end of Q2 (through 10/22) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.

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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.