Do Hedge Funds Love National Bank Holdings Corp (NBHC)?

After several tireless days we have finished crunching the numbers from nearly 817 13F filings issued by the elite hedge funds and other investment firms that we track at Insider Monkey, which disclosed those firms’ equity portfolios as of September 30th. The results of that effort will be put on display in this article, as we share valuable insight into the smart money sentiment towards National Bank Holdings Corp (NYSE:NBHC).

National Bank Holdings Corp (NYSE:NBHC) has seen an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers lately. National Bank Holdings Corp (NYSE:NBHC) was in 6 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistics is 13. Our calculations also showed that NBHC isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks).

Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

In the financial world there are a large number of tools investors have at their disposal to grade stocks. A pair of the most under-the-radar tools are hedge fund and insider trading indicators. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best fund managers can outperform the broader indices by a solid amount. Insider Monkey’s monthly stock picks returned 113% since March 2017 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 66 percentage points. Our short strategy outperformed the S&P 500 short ETFs by 20 percentage points annually (see the details here). That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is a useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost real estate prices. So, we recommended this real estate stock to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 15 best blue chip stocks to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our website. Now let’s view the key hedge fund action surrounding National Bank Holdings Corp (NYSE:NBHC).

How are hedge funds trading National Bank Holdings Corp (NYSE:NBHC)?

At the end of September, a total of 6 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 20% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 12 hedge funds with a bullish position in NBHC a year ago. So, let’s find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

The largest stake in National Bank Holdings Corp (NYSE:NBHC) was held by Renaissance Technologies, which reported holding $40.1 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Elizabeth Park Capital Management with a $2.4 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Millennium Management, Citadel Investment Group, and Citadel Investment Group. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Elizabeth Park Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to National Bank Holdings Corp (NYSE:NBHC), around 1.57% of its 13F portfolio. Renaissance Technologies is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 0.04 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to NBHC.

Consequently, specific money managers have jumped into National Bank Holdings Corp (NYSE:NBHC) headfirst. Millennium Management, managed by Israel Englander, created the largest position in National Bank Holdings Corp (NYSE:NBHC). Millennium Management had $1.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group also made a $0.5 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The only other fund with a new position in the stock is Greg Eisner’s Engineers Gate Manager.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to National Bank Holdings Corp (NYSE:NBHC). These stocks are Taysha Gene Therapies, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSHA), ATN International, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATNI), Twin River Worldwide Holdings Inc. (NYSE:TRWH), Huami Corporation (NYSE:HMI), Sohu.com Limited (NASDAQ:SOHU), RadNet Inc. (NASDAQ:RDNT), and Columbus McKinnon Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCO). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to NBHC’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 13.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $71 million. That figure was $45 million in NBHC’s case. Twin River Worldwide Holdings Inc. (NYSE:TRWH) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Huami Corporation (NYSE:HMI) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks National Bank Holdings Corp (NYSE:NBHC) is even less popular than HMI. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for NBHC is 19.8. 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. Hedge funds clearly dropped the ball on NBHC as the stock delivered strong returns, though hedge funds’ consensus picks still generated respectable returns. Our calculations showed that top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.3% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10 percentage points. These stocks gained 30.7% in 2020 through November 27th and still beat the market by 16.1 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on NBHC as the stock returned 25.5% since Q3 (through November 27th) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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