Hedge Funds Love The Shyft Group, Inc. (SHYF)

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey have plowed through 823 13F filings that hedge funds and well-known value investors are required to file by the SEC. The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of June 30th, when the S&P 500 Index was trading around the 3100 level. Since the end of March, investors decided to bet on the economic recovery and a stock market rebound. S&P 500 Index returned more than 50% since its bottom. In this article you are going to find out whether hedge funds thought The Shyft Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:SHYF) was a good investment heading into the third quarter and how the stock traded in comparison to the top hedge fund picks.

The Shyft Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:SHYF) shareholders have witnessed an increase in enthusiasm from smart money lately. The Shyft Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:SHYF) was in 18 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistics is 18. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. There were 17 hedge funds in our database with SHYF positions at the end of the first quarter. Our calculations also showed that SHYF isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks).

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

According to most stock holders, hedge funds are seen as underperforming, outdated financial tools of the past. While there are more than 8000 funds in operation at present, Our researchers hone in on the aristocrats of this club, around 850 funds. These money managers watch over the lion’s share of the hedge fund industry’s total asset base, and by shadowing their highest performing equity investments, Insider Monkey has unsheathed a few investment strategies that have historically surpassed Mr. Market. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy surpassed the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points annually since its inception in March 2017. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 34% since February 2017 (through August 17th) even though the market was up 53% during the same period. We just shared a list of 8 short targets in our latest quarterly update .

At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost real estate prices. So, we are checking out this junior gold mining stock and we recommended this real estate stock to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 10 most profitable companies in the world to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our website to get excerpts of these letters in your inbox. Now we’re going to go over the latest hedge fund action surrounding The Shyft Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:SHYF).

How have hedgies been trading The Shyft Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:SHYF)?

At the end of June, a total of 18 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 6% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 11 hedge funds with a bullish position in SHYF a year ago. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes substantially (or already accumulated large positions).

More specifically, Driehaus Capital was the largest shareholder of The Shyft Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:SHYF), with a stake worth $14 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Driehaus Capital was Royce & Associates, which amassed a stake valued at $12.7 million. Manatuck Hill Partners, Renaissance Technologies, and Portolan Capital 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 Manatuck Hill Partners allocated the biggest weight to The Shyft Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:SHYF), around 5.33% of its 13F portfolio. G2 Investment Partners Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 1.06 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to SHYF.

As aggregate interest increased, some big names were breaking ground themselves. ExodusPoint Capital, managed by Michael Gelband, established the biggest position in The Shyft Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:SHYF). ExodusPoint Capital had $0.4 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Joel Greenblatt’s Gotham Asset Management also initiated a $0.3 million position during the quarter. The only other fund with a new position in the stock is Bruce Kovner’s Caxton Associates LP.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to The Shyft Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:SHYF). These stocks are Boingo Wireless Inc (NASDAQ:WIFI), NextCure, Inc. (NASDAQ:NXTC), SurModics, Inc. (NASDAQ:SRDX), Live Oak Bancshares Inc (NASDAQ:LOB), UP Fintech Holding Limited (NASDAQ:TIGR), China Yuchai International Limited (NYSE:CYD), and Apollo Medical Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMEH). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to SHYF’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 10 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $78 million. That figure was $67 million in SHYF’s case. NextCure, Inc. (NASDAQ:NXTC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Apollo Medical Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMEH) is the least popular one with only 3 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks The Shyft Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:SHYF) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for SHYF is 86. Stocks with higher number of hedge fund positions relative to other stocks as well as relative to their historical range receive a higher sentiment score. 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 returned 24.8% in 2020 through the end of September but still managed to beat the market by 19.3 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on SHYF as the stock returned 12.3% since the end of June and outperformed the market by an even larger margin. Hedge funds were clearly right about piling into this stock relative to other stocks with similar market capitalizations.

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