Hedge Funds Are Warming Up To Hancock Whitney Corporation (HWC)

Insider Monkey has processed numerous 13F filings of hedge funds and successful value investors to create an extensive database of hedge fund holdings. The 13F filings show the hedge funds’ and successful investors’ positions as of the end of the third quarter. You can find articles about an individual hedge fund’s trades on numerous financial news websites. However, in this article we will take a look at their collective moves over the last 6 years and analyze what the smart money thinks of Hancock Whitney Corporation (NASDAQ:HWC) based on that data.

Is Hancock Whitney Corporation (NASDAQ:HWC) the right investment to pursue these days? Investors who are in the know were taking an optimistic view. The number of bullish hedge fund positions advanced by 1 recently. Hancock Whitney Corporation (NASDAQ:HWC) was in 23 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 24. Our calculations also showed that HWC isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings). There were 22 hedge funds in our database with HWC holdings at the end of June.

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 take a gander at the fresh hedge fund action regarding Hancock Whitney Corporation (NASDAQ:HWC).

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

At the end of September, a total of 23 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 5% from the second quarter of 2021. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards HWC over the last 25 quarters. So, let’s review 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, Brandon Haley’s Holocene Advisors has the number one position in Hancock Whitney Corporation (NASDAQ:HWC), worth close to $28.6 million, amounting to 0.2% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Schonfeld Strategic Advisors, managed by Ryan Tolkin (CIO), which holds a $21.4 million position; the fund has 0.2% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining hedge funds and institutional investors that hold long positions contain Mark Lee’s Forest Hill Capital, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management and Noam Gottesman’s GLG Partners. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Forest Hill Capital allocated the biggest weight to Hancock Whitney Corporation (NASDAQ:HWC), around 3.87% of its 13F portfolio. Elizabeth Park Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 1.96 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to HWC.

As industrywide interest jumped, some big names were leading the bulls’ herd. Renaissance Technologies, established the largest position in Hancock Whitney Corporation (NASDAQ:HWC). Renaissance Technologies had $5.9 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Allon Hellmann’s Full18 Capital also initiated a $3.1 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new HWC investors: Joe DiMenna’s ZWEIG DIMENNA PARTNERS, Karim Abbadi and Edward McBride’s Centiva Capital, and Jinghua Yan’s TwinBeech Capital.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Hancock Whitney Corporation (NASDAQ:HWC) but similarly valued. We will take a look at ReNew Energy Global plc (NASDAQ:RNW), Diodes Incorporated (NASDAQ:DIOD), Univar Solutions Inc (NYSE:UNVR), Sonos, Inc. (NASDAQ:SONO), Spectrum Brands Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:SPB), Safehold Inc. (NYSE:SAFE), and Vonage Holdings Corp. (NYSE:VG). This group of stocks’ market caps match HWC’s market cap.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 28.3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $468 million. That figure was $147 million in HWC’s case. Sonos, Inc. (NASDAQ:SONO) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Safehold Inc. (NYSE:SAFE) is the least popular one with only 18 bullish hedge fund positions. Hancock Whitney Corporation (NASDAQ:HWC) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for HWC is 42.8. 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 negative signal and 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 31.1% in 2021 through December 9th and surpassed the market again by 5.1 percentage points. Unfortunately HWC wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); HWC investors were disappointed as the stock returned 5.1% since the end of September (through 12/9) 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 most of these stocks already outperformed the market in 2021.

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

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