Hedge Funds Have Never Been This Bullish On The Joint Corp. (JYNT)

The 700+ hedge funds and famous money managers tracked by Insider Monkey have already compiled and submitted their 13F filings for the third quarter, which unveil their equity positions as of September 30. We went through these filings, fixed typos and other more significant errors and identified the changes in hedge fund portfolios. Our extensive review of these public filings is finally over, so this article is set to reveal the smart money sentiment towards The Joint Corp. (NASDAQ:JYNT).

The Joint Corp. (NASDAQ:JYNT) has seen an increase in hedge fund sentiment lately. Our calculations also showed that JYNT isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings and see the video below for Q2 rankings).
5 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds
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 employ to assess stocks. A couple of the less utilized signals are hedge fund and insider trading sentiment. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the top hedge fund managers can trounce the broader indices by a healthy margin (see the details here).

Chuck Royce

Chuck Royce of Royce & Associates

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  based on an under-the-radar fund manager’s investor letter and the stock gained 20 percent. We’re going to take a look at the latest hedge fund action surrounding The Joint Corp. (NASDAQ:JYNT).

How are hedge funds trading The Joint Corp. (NASDAQ:JYNT)?

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2019, a total of 12 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 20% from the previous quarter. By comparison, 6 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in JYNT 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.

More specifically, Bandera Partners was the largest shareholder of The Joint Corp. (NASDAQ:JYNT), with a stake worth $22.9 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Bandera Partners was Nantahala Capital Management, which amassed a stake valued at $15.8 million. Skylands Capital, Royce & Associates, and Millennium Management were also very fond of the stock, becoming one of the largest hedge fund holders of the company. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Bandera Partners allocated the biggest weight to The Joint Corp. (NASDAQ:JYNT), around 14.45% of its 13F portfolio. Skylands Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 1.45 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to JYNT.

As one would reasonably expect, specific money managers have been driving this bullishness. AQR Capital Management, managed by Cliff Asness, assembled the most outsized position in The Joint Corp. (NASDAQ:JYNT). AQR Capital Management had $0.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. David E. Shaw’s D E Shaw also initiated a $0.4 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Bruce Kovner’s Caxton Associates, David Harding’s Winton Capital Management, and Noam Gottesman’s GLG Partners.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to The Joint Corp. (NASDAQ:JYNT). We will take a look at Radiant Logistics, Inc. (NYSE:RLGT), Adesto Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ:IOTS), Amplify Energy Corp. (NYSE:AMPY), and Atlantic Power Corporation (NYSE:AT). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble JYNT’s market cap.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
RLGT 14 11751 2
IOTS 14 54092 6
AMPY 22 113577 22
AT 12 27905 0
Average 15.5 51831 7.5

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 15.5 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $52 million. That figure was $57 million in JYNT’s case. Amplify Energy Corp. (NYSE:AMPY) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Atlantic Power Corporation (NYSE:AT) is the least popular one with only 12 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks The Joint Corp. (NASDAQ:JYNT) is even less popular than AT. Hedge funds dodged a bullet by taking a bearish stance towards JYNT. Our calculations showed that the top 20 most popular hedge fund stocks returned 37.4% in 2019 through the end of November and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 9.9 percentage points. Unfortunately JYNT wasn’t nearly as popular as these 20 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was very bearish); JYNT investors were disappointed as the stock returned 2.9% during the fourth quarter (through the end of November) 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 so far in Q4.

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