Hedge Funds Are Crazy About CNX Resources Corporation (CNX)

Our extensive research has shown that imitating the smart money can generate significant returns for retail investors, which is why we track nearly 900 active prominent money managers and analyze their quarterly 13F filings. The stocks that are heavily bought by hedge funds historically outperformed the market, though there is no shortage of high profile failures like hedge funds’ 2018 losses in Facebook and Apple. Let’s take a closer look at what the funds we track think about CNX Resources Corporation (NYSE:CNX) in this article.

Is CNX Resources Corporation (NYSE:CNX) going to take off soon? Investors who are in the know were betting on the stock. The number of long hedge fund bets inched up by 7 recently. CNX Resources Corporation (NYSE:CNX) was in 30 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistic is 38. Our calculations also showed that CNX isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).

To the average investor there are plenty of tools investors employ to evaluate publicly traded companies. Two of the most useful tools are hedge fund and insider trading moves. Our researchers have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the top fund managers can trounce their index-focused peers by a superb margin (see the details here). Also, our monthly newsletter’s portfolio of long stock picks returned 185.4% since March 2017 (through August 2021) and beat the S&P 500 Index by more than 79 percentage points. You can download a sample issue of this newsletter on our website.

Ryan Tolkin, CIO of Schonfeld Strategic Advisors

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium mining is one of the fastest growing industries right now, so we are checking out stock pitches like this emerging lithium stock. We go through lists like the 10 best EV stocks to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. 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 homepage. Keeping this in mind let’s take a gander at the fresh hedge fund action encompassing CNX Resources Corporation (NYSE:CNX).

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

Heading into the third quarter of 2021, a total of 30 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 30% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards CNX over the last 24 quarters. With hedgies’ capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of notable hedge fund managers who were adding to their holdings meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in CNX Resources Corporation (NYSE:CNX) was held by Southeastern Asset Management, which reported holding $384.8 million worth of stock at the end of June. It was followed by D E Shaw with a $50.6 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Aequim Alternative Investments, Arrowstreet Capital, and Quaker Capital Investments. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Southeastern Asset Management allocated the biggest weight to CNX Resources Corporation (NYSE:CNX), around 7.74% of its 13F portfolio. Quaker Capital Investments is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 3.98 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CNX.

As one would reasonably expect, specific money managers were breaking ground themselves. Marshall Wace LLP, managed by Paul Marshall and Ian Wace, created the largest position in CNX Resources Corporation (NYSE:CNX). Marshall Wace LLP had $3.3 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital also made a $1 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new CNX positions are Mark Broach’s Manatuck Hill Partners, Ryan Tolkin (CIO)’s Schonfeld Strategic Advisors, and Qing Li’s Sciencast Management.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to CNX Resources Corporation (NYSE:CNX). These stocks are Alamos Gold Inc (NYSE:AGI), Kennametal Inc. (NYSE:KMT), Hilltop Holdings Inc. (NYSE:HTH), Jumia Technologies AG (NYSE:JMIA), Berkeley Lights, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLI), Calix Inc (NYSE:CALX), and Utz Brands Inc (NYSE:UTZ). This group of stocks’ market values match CNX’s market value.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
AGI 20 221648 -2
KMT 18 376031 5
HTH 8 44603 -8
JMIA 14 153915 -2
BLI 15 379480 -1
CALX 23 289870 -8
UTZ 14 76181 1
Average 16 220247 -2.1

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 16 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $220 million. That figure was $540 million in CNX’s case. Calix Inc (NYSE:CALX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Hilltop Holdings Inc. (NYSE:HTH) is the least popular one with only 8 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks CNX Resources Corporation (NYSE:CNX) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CNX is 83.7. 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 24.9% in 2021 through October 15th and still beat the market by 4.5 percentage points. Unfortunately CNX wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on CNX were disappointed as the stock returned -3% since the end of the second quarter (through 10/15) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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