Hedge Funds Are Crazy About Moneygram International Inc (MGI)

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. We have processed the filings of the more than 867 world-class investment firms that we track and now have access to the collective wisdom contained in these filings, which are based on their September 30th holdings, data that is available nowhere else. Should you consider Moneygram International Inc (NYSE:MGI) for your portfolio? We’ll look to this invaluable collective wisdom for the answer.

Moneygram International Inc (NYSE:MGI) has seen a decrease in hedge fund interest in recent months. Moneygram International Inc (NYSE:MGI) was in 23 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 24. There were 24 hedge funds in our database with MGI holdings at the end of June. Our calculations also showed that MGI isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings).

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium prices have more than doubled over the past year, so 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. Now let’s take a peek at the key hedge fund action surrounding Moneygram International Inc (NYSE:MGI).

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

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 23 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -4% from the previous quarter. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in MGI over the last 25 quarters. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings substantially (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in Moneygram International Inc (NYSE:MGI) was held by Arctis Global, which reported holding $36.4 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Portolan Capital Management with a $25.8 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Park West Asset Management, Beach Point Capital Management, and Point72 Asset Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Yost Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Moneygram International Inc (NYSE:MGI), around 12.17% of its 13F portfolio. Arctis Global is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 10.58 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to MGI.

Since Moneygram International Inc (NYSE:MGI) has experienced a decline in interest from the smart money, logic holds that there exists a select few hedge funds who were dropping their positions entirely by the end of the third quarter. At the top of the heap, Zachary Miller’s Parian Global Management cut the largest position of all the hedgies followed by Insider Monkey, totaling close to $9.1 million in stock, and Travis Cocke’s Voss Capital was right behind this move, as the fund said goodbye to about $3.5 million worth. These moves are interesting, as total hedge fund interest fell by 1 funds by the end of the third quarter.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Moneygram International Inc (NYSE:MGI). These stocks are CRA International, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRAI), PetIQ, Inc. (NASDAQ:PETQ), Sigma Lithium Corporation (NASDAQ:SGML), Liquidity Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:LQDT), Eagle Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:EGRX), Lindblad Expeditions Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LIND), and AerSale Corporation (NASDAQ:ASLE). This group of stocks’ market valuations resemble MGI’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 10.3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $115 million. That figure was $200 million in MGI’s case. CRA International, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRAI) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Sigma Lithium Corporation (NASDAQ:SGML) is the least popular one with only 2 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Moneygram International Inc (NYSE:MGI) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for MGI is 82.8. 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. 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 31.1% in 2021 through December 9th and still beat the market by 5.1 percentage points. Unfortunately MGI wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on MGI were disappointed as the stock returned -6.1% since the end of the third quarter (through 12/9) 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.

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