Hedge Funds Are Warming Up To Civista Bancshares, Inc. (CIVB)

A whopping number of 13F filings filed with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has been processed by Insider Monkey so that individual investors can look at the overall hedge fund sentiment towards the stocks included in their watchlists. These freshly-submitted public filings disclose money managers’ equity positions as of the end of the three-month period that ended September 30, so let’s proceed with the discussion of the hedge fund sentiment on Civista Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:CIVB).

Is Civista Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:CIVB) the right investment to pursue these days? The smart money is getting more optimistic. The number of long hedge fund positions increased by 2 in recent months. Our calculations also showed that CIVB isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings and see the video below for Q2 rankings).

Video: Click the image to watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

At the moment there are many signals shareholders put to use to value stocks. A duo of the less utilized signals are hedge fund and insider trading signals. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the best fund managers can outpace the S&P 500 by a solid margin (see the details here).

We leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example Discover is offering this insane cashback card, so we look into shorting the stock. One of the most bullish analysts in America just put his money where his mouth is. He says, “I’m investing more today than I did back in early 2009.” So we check out his pitch. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. We even check out this option genius’ weekly trade ideas. This December, we recommended Adams Energy as a one-way bet based on an under-the-radar fund manager’s investor letter and the stock already gained 20 percent. With all of this in mind let’s review the new hedge fund action surrounding Civista Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:CIVB).

Hedge fund activity in Civista Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:CIVB)

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2019, a total of 6 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 50% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 9 hedge funds with a bullish position in CIVB 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.

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Castine Capital Management, managed by Paul Magidson, Jonathan Cohen. And Ostrom Enders, holds the biggest position in Civista Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:CIVB). Castine Capital Management has a $11.7 million position in the stock, comprising 3.2% of its 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Renaissance Technologies,  which holds a $6.8 million position; less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Remaining peers with similar optimism include Anton Schutz’s Mendon Capital Advisors, David Harding’s Winton Capital Management and Israel Englander’s Millennium Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Castine Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Civista Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:CIVB), around 3.2% of its 13F portfolio. Mendon Capital Advisors is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 0.47 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CIVB.

As aggregate interest increased, key money managers have been driving this bullishness. Winton Capital Management, managed by David Harding, created the most outsized position in Civista Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:CIVB). Winton Capital Management had $1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Israel Englander’s Millennium Management also initiated a $0.7 million position during the quarter. The only other fund with a brand new CIVB position is Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Civista Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:CIVB) but similarly valued. We will take a look at HighPoint Resources Corporation (NYSE:HPR), Allied Motion Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMOT), Ashford Hospitality Trust, Inc. (NYSE:AHT), and Secoo Holding Limited (NASDAQ:SECO). All of these stocks’ market caps match CIVB’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 9.25 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $30 million. That figure was $23 million in CIVB’s case. Allied Motion Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMOT) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Secoo Holding Limited (NASDAQ:SECO) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. Civista Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:CIVB) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. This is a slightly negative signal and we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. Our calculations showed that top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 37.4% in 2019 through the end of November and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 9.9 percentage points. Unfortunately CIVB wasn’t nearly as popular as these 20 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); CIVB investors were disappointed as the stock returned 0.3% during the first two months of the fourth quarter and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds as 70 percent of these stocks already outperformed the market in Q4.

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