Hedge Funds Keep Buying Juniper Industrial Holdings, Inc. (JIH)

In this article we will check out the progression of hedge fund sentiment towards Juniper Industrial Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:JIH) and determine whether it is a good investment right now. We at Insider Monkey like to examine what billionaires and hedge funds think of a company before spending days of research on it. Given their 2 and 20 payment structure, hedge funds have more incentives and resources than the average investor. The funds have access to expert networks and get tips from industry insiders. They also employ numerous Ivy League graduates and MBAs. Like everyone else, hedge funds perform miserably at times, but their consensus picks have historically outperformed the market after risk adjustments.

Is Juniper Industrial Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:JIH) a healthy stock for your portfolio? Prominent investors are taking an optimistic view. The number of long hedge fund bets improved by 1 in recent months. Our calculations also showed that JIH 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). JIH was in 17 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2020. There were 16 hedge funds in our database with JIH holdings at the end of the previous quarter.

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

In the financial world there are a large number of tools investors have at their disposal to grade stocks. A pair of the most under-the-radar tools are hedge fund and insider trading indicators. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best fund managers can outperform the broader indices by a solid amount. Insider Monkey’s monthly stock picks returned 101% since March 2017 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 58 percentage points. Our short strategy outperformed the S&P 500 short ETFs by 20 percentage points annually (see the details here). That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is a useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

We leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example Europe is set to become the world’s largest cannabis market, so we check out this European marijuana stock pitch. 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. Now we’re going to take a glance at the fresh hedge fund action encompassing Juniper Industrial Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:JIH).

What does smart money think about Juniper Industrial Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:JIH)?

At Q1’s end, a total of 17 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 6% from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards JIH over the last 18 quarters. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists a few noteworthy hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes substantially (or already accumulated large positions).

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Alec Litowitz and Ross Laser’s Magnetar Capital has the largest position in Juniper Industrial Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:JIH), worth close to $16.7 million, corresponding to 0.4% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Glazer Capital, led by Paul Glazer, holding a $15.7 million position; the fund has 1% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish encompass Michael Platt and William Reeves’s BlueCrest Capital Mgmt., Israel Englander’s Millennium Management and Alexander Mitchell’s Scopus Asset Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Cobalt Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Juniper Industrial Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:JIH), around 2.64% of its 13F portfolio. Bulldog Investors is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 1.15 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to JIH.

Now, key money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Glazer Capital, managed by Paul Glazer, created the biggest position in Juniper Industrial Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:JIH). Glazer Capital had $15.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Israel Englander’s Millennium Management also made a $5.8 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new JIH investors: Anand Parekh’s Alyeska Investment Group, Wayne Cooperman’s Cobalt Capital Management, and Greg Poole’s Echo Street Capital Management.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Juniper Industrial Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:JIH) but similarly valued. These stocks are BeyondSpring, Inc. (NASDAQ:BYSI), Mitek Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:MITK), Surgery Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ:SGRY), and Dorchester Minerals LP (NASDAQ:DMLP). All of these stocks’ market caps match JIH’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 8.5 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $27 million. That figure was $115 million in JIH’s case. Mitek Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:MITK) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand BeyondSpring, Inc. (NASDAQ:BYSI) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Juniper Industrial Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:JIH) 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 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 13.4% in 2020 through June 22nd but beat the market by 15.9 percentage points. Unfortunately JIH wasn’t nearly as popular as these 10 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on JIH were disappointed as the stock returned 4.2% during the same time 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 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds as many of these stocks already outperformed the market so far this year.

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