Is ATH Stock A Buy or Sell?

Is Athene Holding Ltd. (NYSE:ATH) a good place to invest some of your money right now? We can gain invaluable insight to help us answer that question by studying the investment trends of top investors, who employ world-class Ivy League graduates, who are given immense resources and industry contacts to put their financial expertise to work. The top picks of these firms have historically outperformed the market when we account for known risk factors, making them very valuable investment ideas.

Is ATH stock a buy? Prominent investors were turning bullish. The number of long hedge fund bets moved up by 5 in recent months. Athene Holding Ltd. (NYSE:ATH) was in 36 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistic is 50. Our calculations also showed that ATH isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q4 rankings).

At the moment there are a lot of indicators investors employ to evaluate their holdings. A duo of the most innovative indicators are hedge fund and insider trading activity. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the elite fund managers can trounce the market by a very impressive amount (see the details here).

At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, we heard that billionaire Peter Thiel is backing this psychedelic-drug startup. So, we are taking a closer look at this space. We go through lists like the 10 best biotech stocks under $10 to identify the next stock with 10x upside potential. 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. With all of this in mind let’s review the recent hedge fund action surrounding Athene Holding Ltd. (NYSE:ATH).

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

Heading into the first quarter of 2021, a total of 36 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 16% from the third quarter of 2020. By comparison, 35 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in ATH a year ago. So, let’s examine which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Among these funds, Samlyn Capital held the most valuable stake in Athene Holding Ltd. (NYSE:ATH), which was worth $304.2 million at the end of the fourth quarter. On the second spot was Luxor Capital Group which amassed $202.7 million worth of shares. 40 North Management, Arrowstreet Capital, and Lakewood 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 OCO Capital Partners allocated the biggest weight to Athene Holding Ltd. (NYSE:ATH), around 41.5% of its 13F portfolio. Serengeti Asset Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 8.59 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ATH.

Now, key hedge funds have been driving this bullishness. Adage Capital Management, managed by Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson, created the most valuable position in Athene Holding Ltd. (NYSE:ATH). Adage Capital Management had $8.6 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Renaissance Technologies also made a $6.5 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp, Ryan Tolkin (CIO)’s Schonfeld Strategic Advisors, and Greg Poole’s Echo Street Capital Management.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Athene Holding Ltd. (NYSE:ATH) but similarly valued. These stocks are Tata Motors Limited (NYSE:TTM), Vereit Inc (NYSE:VER), Omega Healthcare Investors Inc (NYSE:OHI), Encompass Health Corporation (NYSE:EHC), Companhia Siderurgica Nacional (NYSE:SID), Owens Corning (NYSE:OC), and Gold Fields Limited (NYSE:GFI). This group of stocks’ market values resemble ATH’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 20.3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $339 million. That figure was $1146 million in ATH’s case. Owens Corning (NYSE:OC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Tata Motors Limited (NYSE:TTM) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. Athene Holding Ltd. (NYSE:ATH) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ATH is 78.4. 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 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 81.2% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 26 percentage points. These stocks gained 7.9% in 2021 through April 1st and still beat the market by 0.4 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on ATH as the stock returned 18.5% since the end of Q4 (through 4/1) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.

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

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