Is CIRCOR International, Inc. (CIR) Going To Burn These Hedge Funds ?

We are still in an overall bull market and many stocks that smart money investors were piling into surged through October 17th. Among them, Facebook and Microsoft ranked among the top 3 picks and these stocks gained 45% and 39% respectively. Hedge funds’ top 3 stock picks returned 34.4% this year and beat the S&P 500 ETFs by 13 percentage points. Investing in index funds guarantees you average returns, not superior returns. We are looking to generate superior returns for our readers. That’s why we believe it isn’t a waste of time to check out hedge fund sentiment before you invest in a stock like CIRCOR International, Inc. (NYSE:CIR).

CIRCOR International, Inc. (NYSE:CIR) investors should pay attention to an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers lately. CIR was in 10 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the second quarter of 2019. There were 7 hedge funds in our database with CIR holdings at the end of the previous quarter. Our calculations also showed that CIR isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (see the video below).
5 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds
Video: Click the image to watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

In today’s marketplace there are tons of metrics stock traders put to use to grade stocks. A pair of the most useful metrics are hedge fund and insider trading sentiment. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the top hedge fund managers can trounce the market by a healthy margin (see the details here).

GAMCO Investors, Mario Gabelli

Unlike former hedge manager, Dr. Steve Sjuggerud, who is convinced Dow will soar past 40000, our long-short investment strategy doesn’t rely on bull markets to deliver double digit returns. We only rely on hedge fund buy/sell signals. We’re going to analyze the latest hedge fund action encompassing CIRCOR International, Inc. (NYSE:CIR).

Hedge fund activity in CIRCOR International, Inc. (NYSE:CIR)

Heading into the third quarter of 2019, a total of 10 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 43% from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in CIR over the last 16 quarters. So, let’s review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

No of Hedge Funds with CIR Positions

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Mario Gabelli’s GAMCO Investors has the most valuable position in CIRCOR International, Inc. (NYSE:CIR), worth close to $88 million, accounting for 0.7% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Chuck Royce of Royce & Associates, with a $43.3 million position; 0.4% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Some other hedge funds and institutional investors that hold long positions consist of Carl Tiedemann and Michael Tiedemann’s TIG Advisors, John D. Gillespie’s Prospector Partners and Noam Gottesman’s GLG Partners.

Now, key hedge funds were breaking ground themselves. TIG Advisors, managed by Carl Tiedemann and Michael Tiedemann, established the most valuable position in CIRCOR International, Inc. (NYSE:CIR). TIG Advisors had $29.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Noam Gottesman’s GLG Partners also initiated a $4.3 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Michael Price’s MFP Investors and Gavin Saitowitz and Cisco J. del Valle’s Springbok Capital.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as CIRCOR International, Inc. (NYSE:CIR) but similarly valued. These stocks are Axsome Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:AXSM), CIM Commercial Trust Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCT), Materialise NV (NASDAQ:MTLS), and GMS Inc. (NYSE:GMS). This group of stocks’ market valuations resemble CIR’s market valuation.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
AXSM 16 105819 2
CMCT 1 394 0
MTLS 2 10287 -2
GMS 20 80650 0
Average 9.75 49288 0

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 9.75 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $49 million. That figure was $175 million in CIR’s case. GMS Inc. (NYSE:GMS) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand CIM Commercial Trust Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCT) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. CIRCOR International, Inc. (NYSE:CIR) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. This is a slightly positive signal but 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 24.4% in 2019 through September 30th and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 4 percentage points. Unfortunately CIR wasn’t nearly as popular as these 20 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on CIR were disappointed as the stock returned -18.4% during the third quarter 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 many of these stocks already outperformed the market so far this year.

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