With the first-quarter round of 13F filings behind us it is time to take a look at the stocks in which some of the best money managers in the world preferred to invest or sell heading into the first quarter. One of these stocks was B2Gold Corp (NYSE:BTG).
Is B2Gold Corp (NYSE:BTG) the right pick for your portfolio? Prominent investors are getting less optimistic. The number of bullish hedge fund bets were cut by 1 recently. Our calculations also showed that btg isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds.
According to most traders, hedge funds are perceived as slow, outdated financial vehicles of the past. While there are greater than 8000 funds in operation at the moment, Our experts look at the masters of this club, approximately 750 funds. These money managers shepherd the lion’s share of the hedge fund industry’s total asset base, and by watching their inimitable investments, Insider Monkey has brought to light a few investment strategies that have historically beaten Mr. Market. Insider Monkey’s flagship hedge fund strategy defeated the S&P 500 index by around 5 percentage points annually since its inception in May 2014 through June 18th. We were able to generate large returns even by identifying short candidates. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 28.2% since February 2017 (through June 18th) even though the market was up nearly 30% during the same period. We just shared a list of 5 short targets in our latest quarterly update and they are already down an average of 8.2% in a month whereas our long picks outperformed the market by 2.5 percentage points in this volatile 5 week period (our long picks also beat the market by 15 percentage points so far this year).
Noam Gottesman, GLG Partners
Let’s review the fresh hedge fund action surrounding B2Gold Corp (NYSE:BTG).
Hedge fund activity in B2Gold Corp (NYSE:BTG)
At the end of the first quarter, a total of 16 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of -6% from the fourth quarter of 2018. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in BTG over the last 15 quarters. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).
The largest stake in B2Gold Corp (NYSE:BTG) was held by Renaissance Technologies, which reported holding $49.8 million worth of stock at the end of March. It was followed by Impala Asset Management with a $23.8 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included GLG Partners, Sprott Asset Management, and Citadel Investment Group.
Judging by the fact that B2Gold Corp (NYSE:BTG) has witnessed falling interest from hedge fund managers, logic holds that there exists a select few funds who sold off their full holdings in the third quarter. Interestingly, Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP dropped the largest position of the 700 funds monitored by Insider Monkey, comprising close to $11.5 million in stock. Gavin Saitowitz and Cisco J. del Valle’s fund, Springbok Capital, also cut its stock, about $0.2 million worth. These transactions are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 1 funds in the third quarter.
Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to B2Gold Corp (NYSE:BTG). We will take a look at Stitch Fix, Inc. (NASDAQ:SFIX), Delek US Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:DK), MakeMyTrip Limited (NASDAQ:MMYT), and Range Resources Corp. (NYSE:RRC). This group of stocks’ market caps match BTG’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| SFIX | 27 | 173160 | 7 |
| DK | 28 | 144251 | 1 |
| MMYT | 12 | 70388 | 1 |
| RRC | 31 | 886310 | 0 |
| Average | 24.5 | 318527 | 2.25 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 24.5 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $319 million. That figure was $122 million in BTG’s case. Range Resources Corp. (NYSE:RRC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand MakeMyTrip Limited (NASDAQ:MMYT) is the least popular one with only 12 bullish hedge fund positions. B2Gold Corp (NYSE:BTG) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. This is a slightly negative signal and 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 6.2% in Q2 through June 19th and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by nearly 3 percentage points. Unfortunately BTG wasn’t nearly as popular as these 20 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); BTG investors were disappointed as the stock returned 1.4% 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 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.
