Do Hedge Funds Love Orion Marine Group, Inc. (ORN)?

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 fund investors experienced strong gains on the back of a strong market performance, which certainly propelled them to adjust their equity holdings so as to maintain the desired risk profile. As a result, the relevancy of these public filings and their content is indisputable, as they may reveal numerous high-potential stocks. The following article will discuss the smart money sentiment towards Orion Marine Group, Inc. (NYSE:ORN).

Orion Marine Group, Inc. (NYSE:ORN) has seen an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers of late. Our calculations also showed that ORN isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings and see the video below for Q2 rankings).
5 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds
Video: Click the image to watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

In the eyes of most stock holders, hedge funds are seen as slow, outdated financial vehicles of the past. While there are greater than 8000 funds with their doors open at present, We look at the elite of this group, around 750 funds. Most estimates calculate that this group of people control bulk of all hedge funds’ total capital, and by following their finest investments, Insider Monkey has identified various investment strategies that have historically outpaced the broader indices. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy outrun the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points per year since its inception in May 2014. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 27.8% since February 2017 (through November 21st) even though the market was up more than 39% during the same period. We just shared a list of 7 short targets in our latest quarterly update .

John Overdeck of Two Sigma

John Overdeck of Two Sigma Advisors

We leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example Discover is offering this insane cashback card, so we look into shorting the stock. One of the most bullish analysts in America just put his money where his mouth is. He says, “I’m investing more today than I did back in early 2009.” So we check out his pitch. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. We even check out this option genius’ weekly trade ideas. This December, we recommended Adams Energy as a one-way bet based on an under-the-radar fund manager’s investor letter and the stock already gained 20 percent. With all of this in mind we’re going to take a look at the fresh hedge fund action regarding Orion Marine Group, Inc. (NYSE:ORN).

How are hedge funds trading Orion Marine Group, Inc. (NYSE:ORN)?

At Q3’s end, a total of 7 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 17% from the second quarter of 2019. On the other hand, there were a total of 9 hedge funds with a bullish position in ORN a year ago. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

The largest stake in Orion Marine Group, Inc. (NYSE:ORN) was held by Millennium Management, which reported holding $3.1 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Renaissance Technologies with a $2 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included D E Shaw, Fondren Management, and Two Sigma Advisors. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Fondren Management allocated the biggest weight to Orion Marine Group, Inc. (NYSE:ORN), around 1.05% of its 13F portfolio. Ancora Advisors is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.04 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ORN.

There weren’t any hedge funds initiating brand new positions in the stock during the third quarter.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Orion Marine Group, Inc. (NYSE:ORN). We will take a look at Condor Hospitality Trust, Inc. (NYSEAMERICAN:CDOR), Mustang Bio, Inc. (NASDAQ:MBIO), County Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:ICBK), and iCAD Inc (NASDAQ:ICAD). This group of stocks’ market valuations match ORN’s market valuation.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
CDOR 5 5777 3
MBIO 6 15947 0
ICBK 6 11470 1
ICAD 6 8038 -2
Average 5.75 10308 0.5

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 5.75 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $10 million. That figure was $10 million in ORN’s case. Mustang Bio, Inc. (NASDAQ:MBIO) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Condor Hospitality Trust, Inc. (NYSEAMERICAN:CDOR) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Orion Marine Group, Inc. (NYSE:ORN) is more popular among hedge funds. Our calculations showed that top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 37.4% in 2019 through the end of November and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 9.9 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on ORN as the stock returned 22.4% during the first two months of Q4 and outperformed the market by an even larger margin. Hedge funds were clearly right about piling into this stock relative to other stocks with similar market capitalizations.

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