Legendary investors such as Jeffrey Talpins and Seth Klarman earn enormous amounts of money for themselves and their investors by doing in-depth research on small-cap stocks that big brokerage houses don’t publish. Small cap stocks -especially when they are screened well- can generate substantial outperformance versus a boring index fund. That’s why we analyze the activity of those elite funds in these small-cap stocks. In the following paragraphs, we analyze Evergy, Inc. (NYSE:EVRG) from the perspective of those elite funds.
Evergy, Inc. (NYSE:EVRG) was in 25 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. EVRG investors should pay attention to an increase in hedge fund interest recently. There were 24 hedge funds in our database with EVRG positions at the end of the previous quarter. Our calculations also showed that EVRG isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds.
If you’d ask most shareholders, hedge funds are perceived as worthless, outdated investment vehicles of the past. While there are over 8000 funds trading today, Our researchers hone in on the bigwigs of this group, approximately 750 funds. It is estimated that this group of investors orchestrate the lion’s share of the smart money’s total asset base, and by keeping an eye on their finest equity investments, Insider Monkey has determined numerous investment strategies that have historically surpassed the broader indices. Insider Monkey’s flagship hedge fund strategy outperformed the S&P 500 index by around 5 percentage points per annum since its inception in May 2014. We were able to generate large returns even by identifying short candidates. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 25.7% since February 2017 (through September 30th) even though the market was up more than 33% during the same period. We just shared a list of 10 short targets in our latest quarterly update .
Unlike this former hedge fund manager who is convinced Dow will soar past 40000, our long-short investment strategy doesn’t rely on bull markets to deliver double digit returns. We only rely on hedge fund buy/sell signals. Let’s analyze the key hedge fund action surrounding Evergy, Inc. (NYSE:EVRG).
Hedge fund activity in Evergy, Inc. (NYSE:EVRG)
At Q2’s end, a total of 25 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 4% from the previous quarter. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in EVRG over the last 16 quarters. So, let’s review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
Among these funds, Renaissance Technologies held the most valuable stake in Evergy, Inc. (NYSE:EVRG), which was worth $393.3 million at the end of the second quarter. On the second spot was Millennium Management which amassed $188.9 million worth of shares. Moreover, Adage Capital Management, GLG Partners, and D E Shaw were also bullish on Evergy, Inc. (NYSE:EVRG), allocating a large percentage of their portfolios to this stock.
With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, specific money managers were breaking ground themselves. Zimmer Partners, managed by Stuart J. Zimmer, created the most valuable position in Evergy, Inc. (NYSE:EVRG). Zimmer Partners had $17.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Zilvinas Mecelis’s Covalis Capital also made a $3.9 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Perella Weinberg Partners and David Andre and Astro Teller’s Cerebellum Capital.
Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Evergy, Inc. (NYSE:EVRG). We will take a look at Tableau Software Inc (NYSE:DATA), W.W. Grainger, Inc. (NYSE:GWW), Magellan Midstream Partners, L.P. (NYSE:MMP), and Pinterest, Inc. (NYSE:PINS). This group of stocks’ market caps match EVRG’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| DATA | 55 | 3598512 | 11 |
| GWW | 21 | 285138 | -8 |
| MMP | 10 | 62495 | 0 |
| PINS | 31 | 402373 | 31 |
| Average | 29.25 | 1087130 | 8.5 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 29.25 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1087 million. That figure was $962 million in EVRG’s case. Tableau Software Inc (NYSE:DATA) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Magellan Midstream Partners, L.P. (NYSE:MMP) is the least popular one with only 10 bullish hedge fund positions. Evergy, Inc. (NYSE:EVRG) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our calculations showed that top 20 most popular stocks (see the video below) among hedge funds returned 24.4% in 2019 through September 30th and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 4 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on EVRG as the stock returned 11.5% during the same time frame and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.
Video: Click the image to watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
