Hedge Funds Are Piling Into MGM Resorts International (MGM)

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. Insider Monkey finished processing 873 13F filings submitted by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of June 30th, 2021. In this article we are going to take a look at smart money sentiment towards MGM Resorts International (NYSE:MGM).

MGM Resorts International (NYSE:MGM) has experienced an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers in recent months. MGM Resorts International (NYSE:MGM) was in 59 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistic is 67. There were 57 hedge funds in our database with MGM holdings at the end of March. Our calculations also showed that MGM isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).

If you’d ask most shareholders, hedge funds are viewed as slow, old investment tools of the past. While there are greater than 8000 funds in operation at the moment, Our experts hone in on the upper echelon of this club, approximately 850 funds. Most estimates calculate that this group of people preside over most of all hedge funds’ total capital, and by monitoring their highest performing investments, Insider Monkey has found a few investment strategies that have historically surpassed the market. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy outperformed 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 .

William Gray Orbis Investment Management

William Gray of Orbis Investment Management

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

At Q2’s end, a total of 59 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 4% from the first quarter of 2020. By comparison, 32 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in MGM a year ago. So, let’s check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

The largest stake in MGM Resorts International (NYSE:MGM) was held by Corvex Capital, which reported holding $668.5 million worth of stock at the end of June. It was followed by Orbis Investment Management with a $504.6 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included SRS Investment Management, Southeastern Asset Management, and Citadel Investment Group. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Corvex Capital allocated the biggest weight to MGM Resorts International (NYSE:MGM), around 22.36% of its 13F portfolio. SRS Investment Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 7.19 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to MGM.

Consequently, key money managers have been driving this bullishness. Citadel Investment Group, managed by Ken Griffin, created the most valuable call position in MGM Resorts International (NYSE:MGM). Citadel Investment Group had $82.4 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Brandon Haley’s Holocene Advisors also made a $15.3 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new MGM investors: Eduardo Abush’s Waterfront Capital Partners, Joseph Samuels’s Islet Management, and George Soros’s Soros Fund Management.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as MGM Resorts International (NYSE:MGM) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Church & Dwight Co., Inc. (NYSE:CHD), Gartner Inc (NYSE:IT), Fortis Inc. (NYSE:FTS), StoneCo Ltd. (NASDAQ:STNE), Avantor, Inc. (NYSE:AVTR), Halliburton Company (NYSE:HAL), and Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTWO). This group of stocks’ market valuations resemble MGM’s market valuation.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
CHD 35 1383073 8
IT 39 1988886 -1
FTS 9 185027 -1
STNE 44 2739991 5
AVTR 44 2178398 -4
HAL 29 1336150 1
TTWO 55 1313646 14
Average 36.4 1589310 3.1

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 36.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1589 million. That figure was $2889 million in MGM’s case. Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTWO) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Fortis Inc. (NYSE:FTS) is the least popular one with only 9 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks MGM Resorts International (NYSE:MGM) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for MGM is 83.4. 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 returned 25.7% in 2021 through September 27th but still managed to beat the market by 6.2 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on MGM as the stock returned 5.7% since the end of June (through 9/27) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin. Hedge funds were clearly right about piling into this stock relative to other stocks with similar market capitalizations.

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