Hedge Funds Are Piling Into Celanese Corporation (CE)

Is Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE) a good place to invest some of your money right now? We can gain invaluable insight to help us answer that question by studying the investment trends of top investors, who employ world-class Ivy League graduates, who are given immense resources and industry contacts to put their financial expertise to work. The top picks of these firms have historically outperformed the market when we account for known risk factors, making them very valuable investment ideas.

Is Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE) the right investment to pursue these days? Prominent investors were becoming hopeful. The number of bullish hedge fund bets advanced by 1 lately. Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE) was in 37 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistic was previously 36. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that CE isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings). There were 36 hedge funds in our database with CE holdings at the end of March.

In today’s marketplace there are many metrics stock traders can use to value publicly traded companies. Two of the best metrics are hedge fund and insider trading interest. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best money managers can outperform the market by a healthy 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.

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, we like undervalued, EBITDA-positive growth stocks, so we are checking out stock pitches like this emerging biotech 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 look at the key hedge fund action regarding Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE).

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

At the end of the second quarter, a total of 37 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 3% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards CE over the last 24 quarters. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

More specifically, GMT Capital was the largest shareholder of Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE), with a stake worth $209.2 million reported as of the end of June. Trailing GMT Capital was Holocene Advisors, which amassed a stake valued at $136.2 million. AQR Capital Management, Millennium Management, and Arrowstreet Capital 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 GMT Capital allocated the biggest weight to Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE), around 15.62% of its 13F portfolio. Private Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 1.1 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CE.

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, some big names have jumped into Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE) headfirst. Millennium Management, managed by Israel Englander, assembled the most outsized call position in Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE). Millennium Management had $3 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Benjamin A. Smith’s Laurion Capital Management also initiated a $1.1 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new CE positions are Ran Pang’s Quantamental Technologies, Alec Litowitz and Ross Laser’s Magnetar Capital, and Matthew Tewksbury’s Stevens Capital Management.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE). These stocks are Diamondback Energy Inc (NASDAQ:FANG), United Airlines Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:UAL), Rollins, Inc. (NYSE:ROL), Zai Lab Limited (NASDAQ:ZLAB), Nuance Communications Inc. (NASDAQ:NUAN), IDEX Corporation (NYSE:IEX), and Entegris Inc (NASDAQ:ENTG). All of these stocks’ market caps resemble CE’s market cap.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 37.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1528 million. That figure was $595 million in CE’s case. Nuance Communications Inc. (NASDAQ:NUAN) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand IDEX Corporation (NYSE:IEX) is the least popular one with only 22 bullish hedge fund positions. Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CE is 51. 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 21.8% in 2021 through October 11th and still beat the market by 4.4 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on CE as the stock returned 5.9% since the end of the second quarter (through 10/11) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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