Is KNSL A Good Stock To Buy Now?

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. We at Insider Monkey have plowed through 817 13F filings that hedge funds and well-known value investors are required to file by the SEC. The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of September 30th, about a month before the elections. In this article we look at what those investors think of Kinsale Capital Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:KNSL).

Is KNSL a good stock to buy now? Kinsale Capital Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:KNSL) investors should be aware of an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers recently. Kinsale Capital Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:KNSL) was in 16 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistic is 14. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that KNSL 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.

In the financial world there are a large number of tools investors have at their disposal to grade stocks. A pair of the most under-the-radar tools are hedge fund and insider trading indicators. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best fund managers can outperform the broader indices by a solid amount. Insider Monkey’s monthly stock picks returned 113% since March 2017 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 66 percentage points. Our short strategy outperformed the S&P 500 short ETFs by 20 percentage points annually (see the details here). That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is a useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

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. With all of this in mind let’s take a look at the new hedge fund action regarding Kinsale Capital Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:KNSL).

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

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2020, a total of 16 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 14% from the second quarter of 2020. By comparison, 12 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in KNSL a year ago. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Driehaus Capital, managed by Richard Driehaus, holds the biggest position in Kinsale Capital Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:KNSL). Driehaus Capital has a $22.7 million position in the stock, comprising 0.5% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is PEAK6 Capital Management, managed by Matthew Hulsizer, which holds a $9.7 million call position; less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Other hedge funds and institutional investors with similar optimism comprise Noam Gottesman’s GLG Partners, David Harding’s Winton Capital Management and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Driehaus Capital allocated the biggest weight to Kinsale Capital Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:KNSL), around 0.47% of its 13F portfolio. Quantamental Technologies is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.22 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to KNSL.

Now, some big names were breaking ground themselves. ExodusPoint Capital, managed by Michael Gelband, assembled the most outsized position in Kinsale Capital Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:KNSL). ExodusPoint Capital had $2.9 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp also made a $1 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Ran Pang’s Quantamental Technologies, Mika Toikka’s AlphaCrest Capital Management, and Hoon Kim’s Quantinno Capital.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Kinsale Capital Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:KNSL) but similarly valued. These stocks are Houlihan Lokey Inc (NYSE:HLI), TFS Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:TFSL), Inovalon Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:INOV), Healthcare Realty Trust Inc (NYSE:HR), SSR Mining Inc. (NASDAQ:SSRM), GoHealth, Inc. (NASDAQ:GOCO), and Silgan Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:SLGN). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to KNSL’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 15.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $237 million. That figure was $47 million in KNSL’s case. Inovalon Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:INOV) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand TFS Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:TFSL) is the least popular one with only 9 bullish hedge fund positions. Kinsale Capital Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:KNSL) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for KNSL is 68.8. 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 30.7% in 2020 through December 14th and still beat the market by 15.8 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on KNSL as the stock returned 26.2% since the end of Q3 (through 12/14) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.

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