Hedge Funds Are Piling Into American National Group Inc. (ANAT)

As we already know from media reports and hedge fund investor letters, hedge funds delivered their best returns in a decade. Most investors who decided to stick with hedge funds after a rough 2018 recouped their losses by the end of the fourth quarter of 2019. A significant number of hedge funds continued their strong performance in 2020 and 2021 as well. We get to see hedge funds’ thoughts towards the market and individual stocks by aggregating their quarterly portfolio movements and reading their investor letters. In this article, we will particularly take a look at what hedge funds think about American National Group Inc. (NASDAQ:ANAT).

American National Group Inc. (NASDAQ:ANAT) has seen an increase in hedge fund sentiment lately. American National Group Inc. (NASDAQ:ANAT) was in 20 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the second quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic was previously 17. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. There were 11 hedge funds in our database with ANAT holdings at the end of March. Our calculations also showed that ANAT isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).

If you’d ask most market participants, hedge funds are seen as worthless, outdated investment tools of the past. While there are more than 8000 funds in operation at the moment, Our researchers look at the leaders of this group, approximately 850 funds. It is estimated that this group of investors direct bulk of the hedge fund industry’s total capital, and by monitoring their highest performing investments, Insider Monkey has discovered numerous investment strategies that have historically outpaced the market. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy exceeded the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points per year since its inception in March 2017. 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.

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, plant based food market is expected to explode 100-fold by 2050, so we are checking out this under-the-radar stock. We go through lists like the 10 best growth stocks to buy 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 check out the new hedge fund action encompassing American National Group Inc. (NASDAQ:ANAT).

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

At the end of the second quarter, a total of 20 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 82% from the previous quarter. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in ANAT over the last 24 quarters. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

More specifically, Tudor Investment Corp was the largest shareholder of American National Group Inc. (NASDAQ:ANAT), with a stake worth $21.9 million reported as of the end of June. Trailing Tudor Investment Corp was Zimmer Partners, which amassed a stake valued at $15.5 million. Renaissance Technologies, Arrowstreet Capital, and Jet Capital Investors were also very fond of the stock, becoming one of the largest hedge fund holders of the company. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Jet Capital Investors allocated the biggest weight to American National Group Inc. (NASDAQ:ANAT), around 2.53% of its 13F portfolio. Jet Capital Investors is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 2.42 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ANAT.

Consequently, key money managers were breaking ground themselves. Tudor Investment Corp, managed by Paul Tudor Jones, assembled the most valuable position in American National Group Inc. (NASDAQ:ANAT). Tudor Investment Corp had $21.9 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Matthew Mark’s Jet Capital Investors also initiated a $13.4 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Matthew Mark’s Jet Capital Investors, Paul J. Isaac’s Arbiter Partners Capital Management, and Matthew Halbower’s Pentwater Capital Management.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as American National Group Inc. (NASDAQ:ANAT) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Avnet, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVT), Sabre Corporation (NASDAQ:SABR), Hecla Mining Company (NYSE:HL), BankUnited Inc (NYSE:BKU), Physicians Realty Trust (NYSE:DOC), Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IOVA), and First Majestic Silver Corp (NYSE:AG). This group of stocks’ market values resemble ANAT’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 22.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $543 million. That figure was $113 million in ANAT’s case. Sabre Corporation (NASDAQ:SABR) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand First Majestic Silver Corp (NYSE:AG) is the least popular one with only 11 bullish hedge fund positions. American National Group Inc. (NASDAQ:ANAT) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ANAT is 57.3. 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. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on ANAT as the stock returned 28% since the end of the second quarter (through 10/22) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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