Hedge Funds Are Piling Into eXp World Holdings, Inc. (EXPI)

In this article we will take a look at whether hedge funds think eXp World Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXPI) is a good investment right now. We check hedge fund and billionaire investor sentiment before delving into hours of research. Hedge funds spend millions of dollars on Ivy League graduates, unconventional data sources, expert networks, and get tips from investment bankers and industry insiders. Sure they sometimes fail miserably, but their consensus stock picks historically outperformed the market after adjusting for known risk factors.

eXp World Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXPI) investors should pay attention to an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers in recent months. eXp World Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXPI) was in 22 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic was previously 20. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that EXPI isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 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. With all of this in mind we’re going to analyze the fresh hedge fund action surrounding eXp World Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXPI).

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

At the end of September, a total of 22 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 22% from the previous quarter. By comparison, 14 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in EXPI a year ago. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in eXp World Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXPI) was held by Renaissance Technologies, which reported holding $36.3 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Phoenician Capital with a $11.9 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Driehaus Capital, Millennium Management, and Schonfeld Strategic Advisors. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Phoenician Capital allocated the biggest weight to eXp World Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXPI), around 5.09% of its 13F portfolio. Navellier & Associates is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 0.21 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to EXPI.

Consequently, some big names were breaking ground themselves. Driehaus Capital, managed by Richard Driehaus, assembled the biggest position in eXp World Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXPI). Driehaus Capital had $11.9 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Sander Gerber’s Hudson Bay Capital Management also initiated a $4.8 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Donald Sussman’s Paloma Partners, Jinghua Yan’s TwinBeech Capital, and Greg Eisner’s Engineers Gate Manager.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as eXp World Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXPI) but similarly valued. We will take a look at WESCO International, Inc. (NYSE:WCC), Everbridge, Inc. (NASDAQ:EVBG), Integra Lifesciences Holdings Corp (NASDAQ:IART), Halozyme Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:HALO), SPS Commerce, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPSC), Nextera Energy Partners LP (NYSE:NEP), and Beam Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:BEAM). This group of stocks’ market valuations are closest to EXPI’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 20 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $616 million. That figure was $108 million in EXPI’s case. WESCO International, Inc. (NYSE:WCC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Nextera Energy Partners LP (NYSE:NEP) is the least popular one with only 13 bullish hedge fund positions. eXp World Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXPI) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for EXPI is 71.1. 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. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. 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 29.6% in 2021 and beat the market again by 3.6 percentage points. Unfortunately EXPI wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on EXPI were disappointed as the stock returned -15.2% since the end of September (through 12/31) 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 many of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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