Is Navios Maritime Acquisition Corp (NNA) A Good Stock To Buy?

Insider Monkey has processed numerous 13F filings of hedge funds and successful value investors to create an extensive database of hedge fund holdings. The 13F filings show the hedge funds’ and successful investors’ positions as of the end of the first quarter. You can find articles about an individual hedge fund’s trades on numerous financial news websites. However, in this article we will take a look at their collective moves over the last 4.5 years and analyze what the smart money thinks of Navios Maritime Acquisition Corp (NYSE:NNA) based on that data.

Navios Maritime Acquisition Corp (NYSE:NNA) investors should pay attention to a decrease in hedge fund interest in recent months. Our calculations also showed that NNA isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 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 87% since March 2017 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 51 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 leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, 2020’s unprecedented market conditions provide us with the highest number of trading opportunities in a decade. So we are checking out stocks recommended/scorned by legendary Bill Miller. We interview hedge fund managers and ask them about their best ideas. If you want to find out the best healthcare stock to buy right now, you can watch our latest hedge fund manager interview here. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. Our best call in 2020 was shorting the market when the S&P 500 was trading at 3150 after realizing the coronavirus pandemic’s significance before most investors. Now let’s review the fresh hedge fund action surrounding Navios Maritime Acquisition Corp (NYSE:NNA).

What have hedge funds been doing with Navios Maritime Acquisition Corp (NYSE:NNA)?

Heading into the second quarter of 2020, a total of 4 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -33% from the fourth quarter of 2019. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in NNA over the last 18 quarters. So, let’s check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Jeffrey Altman’s Owl Creek Asset Management has the number one position in Navios Maritime Acquisition Corp (NYSE:NNA), worth close to $0.9 million, amounting to 0.1% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Arrowstreet Capital, led by Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell, holding a $0.6 million position; less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Other professional money managers that are bullish include Renaissance Technologies, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and . In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Owl Creek Asset Management allocated the biggest weight to Navios Maritime Acquisition Corp (NYSE:NNA), around 0.07% of its 13F portfolio. Arrowstreet Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.0017 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to NNA.

Because Navios Maritime Acquisition Corp (NYSE:NNA) has witnessed bearish sentiment from the aggregate hedge fund industry, we can see that there exists a select few money managers that elected to cut their full holdings last quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Gavin Saitowitz and Cisco J. del Valle’s Springbok Capital dropped the biggest investment of the 750 funds monitored by Insider Monkey, totaling about $0.8 million in stock, and Matthew Halbower’s Pentwater Capital Management was right behind this move, as the fund cut about $0.7 million worth. These moves are interesting, as total hedge fund interest dropped by 2 funds last quarter.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Navios Maritime Acquisition Corp (NYSE:NNA). We will take a look at Protalix BioTherapeutics Inc. (NYSE:PLX), SCYNEXIS Inc (NASDAQ:SCYX), Monopar Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:MNPR), and Battalion Oil Corporation (NYSE:BATL). This group of stocks’ market valuations are similar to NNA’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $16 million. That figure was $2 million in NNA’s case. Battalion Oil Corporation (NYSE:BATL) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Monopar Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:MNPR) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Navios Maritime Acquisition Corp (NYSE:NNA) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our calculations showed that top 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.4% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10.1 percentage points. These stocks gained 8.3% in 2020 through the end of May but still beat the market by 13.2 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on NNA as the stock returned 22.2% in Q2 (through the end of May) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.

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