Is BayCom Corp (BCML) A Good Stock To Buy?

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 second quarter. One of these stocks was BayCom Corp (NASDAQ:BCML).

Hedge fund interest in BayCom Corp (NASDAQ:BCML) shares was flat at the end of last quarter. This is usually a negative indicator. At the end of this article we will also compare BCML to other stocks including Kadmon Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:KDMN), Habit Restaurants Inc (NASDAQ:HABT), and LogicBio Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:LOGC) to get a better sense of its popularity.
5 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds
Video: Click the image to watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

If you’d ask most shareholders, hedge funds are assumed to be unimportant, outdated investment vehicles of the past. While there are greater than 8000 funds in operation today, We look at the elite of this club, approximately 750 funds. These hedge fund managers direct bulk of the hedge fund industry’s total asset base, and by observing their inimitable equity investments, Insider Monkey has uncovered various investment strategies that have historically exceeded the broader indices. Insider Monkey’s flagship hedge fund strategy outpaced the S&P 500 index by around 5 percentage points a year since its inception in May 2014. We were able to generate large returns even by identifying short candidates. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 25.7% since February 2017 (through September 30th) even though the market was up more than 33% during the same period. We just shared a list of 10 short targets in our latest quarterly update .

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n addition to following the biggest hedge funds for investment ideas, we also share stock pitches from conferences, investor letters and other sources  like this one where the fund manager is talking about two under the radar 1000% return potential stocks: first one in internet infrastructure and the second in the heart of advertising market. We use hedge fund buy/sell signals to determine whether to conduct in-depth analysis of these stock ideas which take days. Let’s go over the fresh hedge fund action surrounding BayCom Corp (NASDAQ:BCML).

How are hedge funds trading BayCom Corp (NASDAQ:BCML)?

At the end of the second quarter, a total of 4 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 0% from the first quarter of 2019. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in BCML over the last 16 quarters. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

BCML_nov2019

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Emanuel J. Friedman’s EJF Capital has the biggest position in BayCom Corp (NASDAQ:BCML), worth close to $14.1 million, comprising 1.8% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Mendon Capital Advisors, managed by Anton Schutz, which holds a $4.3 million position; 0.7% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Other peers with similar optimism comprise Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates, Louis Navellier’s Navellier & Associates and .

Earlier we told you that the aggregate hedge fund interest in the stock was unchanged and we view this as a negative development. Even though there weren’t any hedge funds dumping their holdings during the second quarter, there weren’t any hedge funds initiating brand new positions. This indicates that hedge funds, at the very best, perceive this stock as dead money and they haven’t identified any viable catalysts that can attract investor attention.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to BayCom Corp (NASDAQ:BCML). We will take a look at Kadmon Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:KDMN), Habit Restaurants Inc (NASDAQ:HABT), LogicBio Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:LOGC), and Ideanomics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IDEX). This group of stocks’ market valuations resemble BCML’s market valuation.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
KDMN 15 116709 0
HABT 12 51066 -2
LOGC 6 128085 0
IDEX 4 236 3
Average 9.25 74024 0.25

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 9.25 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $74 million. That figure was $22 million in BCML’s case. Kadmon Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:KDMN) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Ideanomics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IDEX) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks BayCom Corp (NASDAQ:BCML) is even less popular than IDEX. Our calculations showed that top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 24.4% in 2019 through September 30th and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 4 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on BCML, though not to the same extent, as the stock returned 3.7% during the third quarter and outperformed the market as well.

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