Is Disney (DIS) Stock A Buy or Sell?

We at Insider Monkey have gone over 887 13F filings that hedge funds and prominent investors are required to file by the SEC The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of December 31st. In this article, we look at what those funds think of The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) based on that data.

Is Disney (DIS) stock a buy or sell? Money managers were taking an optimistic view. The number of bullish hedge fund bets went up by 32 in recent months. The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) was in 144 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of December. The all time high for this statistic was previously 118. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that DIS ranked 11th among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q4 rankings).

In the eyes of most investors, hedge funds are assumed to be slow, old investment tools of years past. While there are greater than 8000 funds in operation today, We choose to focus on the upper echelon of this group, around 850 funds. These investment experts command the lion’s share of the hedge fund industry’s total capital, and by observing their top investments, Insider Monkey has determined various investment strategies that have historically defeated the S&P 500 index. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy outpaced the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points per annum since its inception in March 2017. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 13% since February 2017 (through November 17th) even though the market was up 65% during the same period. We just shared a list of 11 short targets in our latest quarterly update .

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

At fourth quarter’s end, a total of 144 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 29% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards DIS over the last 22 quarters. So, let’s find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Among these funds, Coatue Management held the most valuable stake in The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS), which was worth $2003.2 million at the end of the fourth quarter. On the second spot was Fisher Asset Management which amassed $1791.6 million worth of shares. D E Shaw, Third Point, and Eagle 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 Fosse Capital Partners allocated the biggest weight to The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS), around 21.38% of its 13F portfolio. Yost Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 21.17 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to DIS.

Now, some big names have been driving this bullishness. Viking Global, managed by Andreas Halvorsen, created the most outsized position in The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS). Viking Global had $773.9 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Alex Sacerdote’s Whale Rock Capital Management also initiated a $542.5 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Josh Resnick’s Jericho Capital Asset Management, Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management, and Alexander Mitchell’s Scopus Asset Management.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS). We will take a look at Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX), Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC), The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO), Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSA), Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK), Bank of America Corporation (NYSE:BAC), and Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE). This group of stocks’ market values match DIS’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 82.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $14155 million. That figure was $16417 million in DIS’s case. Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO) is the least popular one with only 62 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for DIS is 95. 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% in 2021 through March 12th and still beat the market by 1.6 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about Disney as the stock returned 8.8% since the end of the fourth quarter (through 3/12) and outperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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

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