Insider Monkey finished processing more than 738 13F filings submitted by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of March 31st, 2019. What do these smart investors think about Methanex Corporation (NASDAQ:MEOH)?
Is Methanex Corporation (NASDAQ:MEOH) an excellent stock to buy now? Money managers are betting on the stock. The number of bullish hedge fund positions increased by 1 recently. Our calculations also showed that meoh isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds. MEOH was in 22 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2019. There were 21 hedge funds in our database with MEOH positions at the end of the previous quarter.
Hedge funds’ reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn’t keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Our research has shown that hedge funds’ small-cap stock picks managed to beat the market by double digits annually between 1999 and 2016, but the margin of outperformance has been declining in recent years. Nevertheless, we were still able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the market by 40 percentage points since May 2014 through May 30, 2019 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that underperformed the market by 10 percentage points annually between 2006 and 2017. Interestingly the margin of underperformance of these stocks has been increasing in recent years. Investors who are long the market and short these stocks would have returned more than 27% annually between 2015 and 2017. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 in our quarterly newsletter.
Let’s take a gander at the fresh hedge fund action regarding Methanex Corporation (NASDAQ:MEOH).
What does the smart money think about Methanex Corporation (NASDAQ:MEOH)?
At the end of the first quarter, a total of 22 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 5% from the previous quarter. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in MEOH over the last 15 quarters. 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, AQR Capital Management, managed by Cliff Asness, holds the number one position in Methanex Corporation (NASDAQ:MEOH). AQR Capital Management has a $121.1 million position in the stock, comprising 0.1% of its 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Jim Simons of Renaissance Technologies, with a $28.4 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish consist of Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management, John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group.
Now, key money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Balyasny Asset Management, managed by Dmitry Balyasny, created the largest position in Methanex Corporation (NASDAQ:MEOH). Balyasny Asset Management had $25.9 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management also made a $5.7 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management, Sara Nainzadeh’s Centenus Global Management, and Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP.
Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Methanex Corporation (NASDAQ:MEOH) but similarly valued. These stocks are Pluralsight, Inc. (NASDAQ:PS), Compañía de Minas Buenaventura S.A.A. (NYSE:BVN), Landstar System, Inc. (NASDAQ:LSTR), and Brunswick Corporation (NYSE:BC). All of these stocks’ market caps resemble MEOH’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| PS | 30 | 321492 | 15 |
| BVN | 7 | 16483 | 1 |
| LSTR | 23 | 208696 | 0 |
| BC | 27 | 564907 | 1 |
| Average | 21.75 | 277895 | 4.25 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 21.75 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $278 million. That figure was $261 million in MEOH’s case. Pluralsight, Inc. (NASDAQ:PS) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Compañía de Minas Buenaventura S.A.A. (NYSE:BVN) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. Methanex Corporation (NASDAQ:MEOH) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. This is a slightly positive signal but 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 1.9% in Q2 through May 30th and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by more than 3 percentage points. Unfortunately MEOH wasn’t nearly as popular as these 20 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on MEOH were disappointed as the stock returned -23.9% during the same period 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 13 of these stocks already outperformed the market so far in Q2.
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
