How Did Hedge Funds’ Raymond James Financial, Inc. (RJF) Bets Fare?

Insider Monkey has processed numerous 13F filings of hedge funds and successful value investors to create an extensive database of hedge fund holdings. The 13F filings show the hedge funds’ and successful investors’ positions as of the end of the third quarter. You can find articles about an individual hedge fund’s trades on numerous financial news websites. However, in this article we will take a look at their collective moves over the last 6 years and analyze what the smart money thinks of Raymond James Financial, Inc. (NYSE:RJF) based on that data and determine whether they were really smart about the stock.

Raymond James Financial, Inc. (NYSE:RJF) was in 32 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 35. RJF investors should pay attention to an increase in enthusiasm from smart money recently. There were 29 hedge funds in our database with RJF holdings at the end of June. Our calculations also showed that RJF isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings).

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium prices have more than doubled over the past year, so we go through lists like the 10 best EV stocks to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. Keeping this in mind let’s take a glance at the latest hedge fund action encompassing Raymond James Financial, Inc. (NYSE:RJF).

Do Hedge Funds Think RJF Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2021, a total of 32 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 10% from the second quarter of 2021. By comparison, 28 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in RJF a year ago. With hedge funds’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Brave Warrior Capital, managed by Glenn Greenberg, holds the number one position in Raymond James Financial, Inc. (NYSE:RJF). Brave Warrior Capital has a $209.3 million position in the stock, comprising 7.3% of its 13F portfolio. On Brave Warrior Capital’s heels is John Smith Clark of Southpoint Capital Advisors, with a $110.7 million position; 2.4% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Some other hedge funds and institutional investors that hold long positions include Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and Ryan Tolkin (CIO)’s Schonfeld Strategic Advisors. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Brave Warrior Capital allocated the biggest weight to Raymond James Financial, Inc. (NYSE:RJF), around 7.33% of its 13F portfolio. Southpoint Capital Advisors is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 2.36 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to RJF.

As aggregate interest increased, key hedge funds have jumped into Raymond James Financial, Inc. (NYSE:RJF) headfirst. Renaissance Technologies, assembled the most outsized position in Raymond James Financial, Inc. (NYSE:RJF). Renaissance Technologies had $26.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Greg Poole’s Echo Street Capital Management also initiated a $0.8 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new RJF investors: John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors, Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp, and Karim Abbadi and Edward McBride’s Centiva Capital.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Raymond James Financial, Inc. (NYSE:RJF). We will take a look at Burlington Stores Inc (NYSE:BURL), Restaurant Brands International Inc (NYSE:QSR), Avangrid, Inc. (NYSE:AGR), Tradeweb Markets Inc. (NASDAQ:TW), Tyler Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:TYL), Hologic, Inc. (NASDAQ:HOLX), and Ubiquiti Inc. (NYSE:UI). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to RJF’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 26.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $802 million. That figure was $768 million in RJF’s case. Burlington Stores Inc (NYSE:BURL) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Avangrid, Inc. (NYSE:AGR) is the least popular one with only 9 bullish hedge fund positions. Raymond James Financial, Inc. (NYSE:RJF) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for RJF is 67.4. 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 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 29.6% in 2021 and still beat the market by 3.6 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on RJF as the stock returned 15.1% since the end of Q3 (through 1/31) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.

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