Hedge Funds Checking Out Of SL Green Realty Corp (SLG)

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 first 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 4.5 years and analyze what the smart money thinks of SL Green Realty Corp (NYSE:SLG) based on that data.

Is SL Green Realty Corp (NYSE:SLG) a healthy stock for your portfolio? Money managers are getting less bullish. The number of bullish hedge fund bets shrunk by 4 in recent months. Our calculations also showed that SLG isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks). SLG was in 23 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. There were 27 hedge funds in our database with SLG positions at the end of the previous quarter.

Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

To most market participants, hedge funds are viewed as worthless, old investment tools of years past. While there are more than 8000 funds trading at the moment, Our researchers choose to focus on the crème de la crème of this group, about 850 funds. These investment experts orchestrate most of the smart money’s total capital, and by shadowing their inimitable picks, Insider Monkey has determined numerous investment strategies that have historically surpassed the broader indices. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy outstripped the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points a year since its inception in March 2017. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 36% since February 2017 (through May 18th) even though the market was up 30% during the same period. We just shared a list of 8 short targets in our latest quarterly update .

At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, 2020’s unprecedented market conditions provide us with the highest number of trading opportunities in a decade. So we are checking out trades like this one. We interview hedge fund managers and ask them about their best ideas. If you want to find out the best healthcare stock to buy right now, you can watch our latest hedge fund manager interview here. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. Our best call in 2020 was shorting the market when the S&P 500 was trading at 3150 after realizing the coronavirus pandemic’s significance before most investors. With all of this in mind we’re going to take a peek at the key hedge fund action encompassing SL Green Realty Corp (NYSE:SLG).

Hedge fund activity in SL Green Realty Corp (NYSE:SLG)

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 23 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -15% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 19 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in SLG a year ago. So, let’s examine which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

The largest stake in SL Green Realty Corp (NYSE:SLG) was held by Renaissance Technologies, which reported holding $72 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Levin Easterly Partners with a $35.2 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included LDR Capital, 40 North Management, and Citadel Investment Group. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position LDR Capital allocated the biggest weight to SL Green Realty Corp (NYSE:SLG), around 36.18% of its 13F portfolio. Kamunting Street Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 4.26 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to SLG.

Seeing as SL Green Realty Corp (NYSE:SLG) has faced falling interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, logic holds that there is a sect of hedgies that slashed their full holdings by the end of the first quarter. Interestingly, Ken Heebner’s Capital Growth Management dumped the largest position of all the hedgies followed by Insider Monkey, totaling about $26.2 million in stock. Daniel Johnson’s fund, Gillson Capital, also cut its stock, about $9 million worth. These moves are interesting, as total hedge fund interest dropped by 4 funds by the end of the first quarter.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to SL Green Realty Corp (NYSE:SLG). These stocks are CAE, Inc. (NYSE:CAE), QTS Realty Trust Inc (NYSE:QTS), Stag Industrial Inc (NYSE:STAG), and Grupo Televisa SAB (NYSE:TV). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to SLG’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 18.75 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $252 million. That figure was $192 million in SLG’s case. QTS Realty Trust Inc (NYSE:QTS) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Stag Industrial Inc (NYSE:STAG) is the least popular one with only 15 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks SL Green Realty Corp (NYSE:SLG) is more popular among hedge funds. Our calculations showed that top 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.4% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10.1 percentage points. These stocks gained 13.9% in 2020 through June 10th but still managed to beat the market by 14.2 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on SLG, though not to the same extent, as the stock returned 25.1% in Q2 (through June 10th) and outperformed the market as well.

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