Is CrowdStrike (CRWD) Stock A Buy or Sell?

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. Insider Monkey finished processing 887 13F filings submitted by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of December 31st, 2020. In this article we are going to take a look at smart money sentiment towards CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD).

Is CrowdStrike (CRWD) stock a buy or sell? The best stock pickers were in a bullish mood. The number of long hedge fund bets went up by 21 lately. CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) was in 92 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of December. The all time high for this statistic waspreviously 78. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that CRWD ranked 30th among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q4 rankings).

Today there are a multitude of methods investors employ to evaluate publicly traded companies. A pair of the most innovative methods are hedge fund and insider trading indicators. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the elite fund managers can beat the S&P 500 by a very impressive margin (see the details here).

COATUE MANAGEMENT

Philippe Laffont of Coatue Management

At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. Recently Oregon became the first state to legalize psychedelic mushrooms which are shown to have promising results in treating depression, addiction, and PTSD in early stage academic studies. So, we are checking out this psychedelic drug stock idea right now. We go through lists like the 10 best hydrogen fuel cell 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. 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 homepage (or at the end of this article). With all of this in mind let’s take a peek at the new hedge fund action regarding CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD).

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

At the end of December, a total of 92 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 30% from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in CRWD over the last 22 quarters. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were adding to their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

Is CRWD A Good Stock To Buy?

Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Tiger Global Management LLC, managed by Chase Coleman, holds the most valuable position in CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD). Tiger Global Management LLC has a $1.5965 billion position in the stock, comprising 4.1% of its 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Philippe Laffont of Coatue Management, with a $839.7 million position; the fund has 3.1% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other professional money managers that are bullish include Alex Sacerdote’s Whale Rock Capital Management, David Goel and Paul Ferri’s Matrix Capital Management and D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Isomer Partners allocated the biggest weight to CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD), around 10.4% of its 13F portfolio. Matrix Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 6.87 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CRWD.

Consequently, specific money managers were breaking ground themselves. Melvin Capital Management, managed by Gabriel Plotkin, established the biggest position in CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD). Melvin Capital Management had $158.9 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Michael Kharitonov and Jon David McAuliffe’s Voleon Capital also initiated a $29.7 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new CRWD positions are Panayotis Takis Sparaggis’s Alkeon Capital Management, Suraj Parkash Chopra’s Force Hill Capital Management, and Stanley Druckenmiller’s Duquesne Capital.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD). These stocks are Canadian Pacific Railway Limited (NYSE:CP), Kimberly Clark Corporation (NYSE:KMB), Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE:LVS), Lululemon Athletica inc. (NASDAQ:LULU), DoorDash, Inc. (NYSE:DASH), Capital One Financial Corp. (NYSE:COF), and Roper Technologies Inc. (NYSE:ROP). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to CRWD’s market cap.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
CP 24 1540076 -8
KMB 37 1420161 -4
LVS 63 3065977 16
LULU 50 929013 0
DASH 38 3952490 38
COF 56 3028457 14
ROP 40 1348849 -10
Average 44 2183575 6.6

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 44 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $2184 million. That figure was $7242 million in CRWD’s case. Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE:LVS) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Canadian Pacific Railway Limited (NYSE:CP) is the least popular one with only 24 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CRWD is 90. 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 5.3% in 2021 through March 19th and still beat the market by 0.8 percentage points. Unfortunately CRWD wasn’t nearly as successful as these 30 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on CRWD were disappointed as the stock returned -8.1% since the end of the fourth quarter (through 3/19) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the more diversified list of the top 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

Follow Crowdstrike Holdings Inc.

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