Is ING A Good Stock To Buy Now?

The financial regulations require hedge funds and wealthy investors that exceeded the $100 million equity holdings threshold to file a report that shows their positions at the end of every quarter. Even though it isn’t the intention, these filings to a certain extent level the playing field for ordinary investors. The latest round of 13F filings disclosed the funds’ positions on September 30th, about a month before the elections. We at Insider Monkey have made an extensive database of more than 817 of those established hedge funds and famous value investors’ filings. In this article, we analyze how these elite funds and prominent investors traded ING Groep N.V. (NYSE:ING) based on those filings.

Is ING a good stock to buy now? NG Groep N.V. (NYSE:ING) shareholders have witnessed a decrease in support from the world’s most elite money managers in recent months. ING Groep N.V. (NYSE:ING) was in 9 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistics is 14. Our calculations also showed that ING isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks).

Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

To the average investor there are plenty of methods market participants put to use to analyze stocks. A duo of the most useful methods are hedge fund and insider trading activity. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the elite investment managers can outclass their index-focused peers by a superb margin (see the details here).

At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost real estate prices. So, we recommended this real estate stock to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 15 best blue chip stocks to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. 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. Now let’s take a look at the key hedge fund action surrounding ING Groep N.V. (NYSE:ING).

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

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 9 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -31% from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in ING over the last 21 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.

More specifically, Fisher Asset Management was the largest shareholder of ING Groep N.V. (NYSE:ING), with a stake worth $263.3 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Fisher Asset Management was Orbis Investment Management, which amassed a stake valued at $11.3 million. Paloma Partners, Citadel Investment Group, and CSat Investment Advisory 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 Fisher Asset Management allocated the biggest weight to ING Groep N.V. (NYSE:ING), around 0.23% of its 13F portfolio. Galibier Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 0.15 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ING.

Because ING Groep N.V. (NYSE:ING) has faced a decline in interest from the smart money, it’s safe to say that there is a sect of hedge funds who were dropping their full holdings heading into Q4. Interestingly, Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital said goodbye to the biggest investment of the 750 funds followed by Insider Monkey, worth an estimated $19.4 million in stock. Michael Gelband’s fund, ExodusPoint Capital, also cut its stock, about $0.4 million worth. These bearish behaviors are important to note, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 4 funds heading into Q4.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to ING Groep N.V. (NYSE:ING). These stocks are Orange SA (NYSE:ORAN), AutoZone, Inc. (NYSE:AZO), Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE:YUM), D.R. Horton, Inc. (NYSE:DHI), STMicroelectronics N.V. (NYSE:STM), Travelers Companies Inc (NYSE:TRV), and Okta, Inc. (NASDAQ:OKTA). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble ING’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 38.3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1158 million. That figure was $279 million in ING’s case. D.R. Horton, Inc. (NYSE:DHI) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Orange SA (NYSE:ORAN) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. ING Groep N.V. (NYSE:ING) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ING is 24.6. 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 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.3% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10 percentage points. These stocks gained 32.9% in 2020 through December 8th and still beat the market by 16.2 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on ING as the stock returned 40.4% since the end of the third quarter (through 12/8) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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