Should You Invest in NorthStar Asset Management Group Inc (NSAM)?

We have been waiting for this for a year and finally the third quarter ended up showing a nice bump in the performance of small-cap stocks. Both the S&P 500 and Russell 2000 were up since the end of the second quarter, but small-cap stocks outperformed the large-cap stocks by double digits. This is important for hedge funds, which are big supporters of small-cap stocks, because their investors started pulling some of their capital out due to poor recent performance. It is very likely that equity hedge funds will deliver better risk adjusted returns in the second half of this year. In this article we are going to look at how this recent market trend affected the sentiment of hedge funds towards NorthStar Asset Management Group Inc (NYSE:NSAM), and what that likely means for the prospects of the company and its stock.

NorthStar Asset Management Group Inc (NYSE:NSAM) has witnessed a slight decrease in support from the world’s most elite money managers in recent months. The company was included in the equity portfolios of 47 funds from our database at the end of September, compared to 48 funds at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare NSAM to other stocks, including Synaptics, Incorporated (NASDAQ:SYNA), Minerals Technologies Inc (NYSE:MTX), and Sanmina Corp (NASDAQ:SANM) to get a better sense of its popularity.

At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 18% gains over the past 12 months, more than doubling the 8% returns enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs.

Keeping this in mind, we’re going to take a look at the key action surrounding NorthStar Asset Management Group Inc (NYSE:NSAM).

Hedge fund activity in NorthStar Asset Management Group Inc (NYSE:NSAM)

A total of 47 funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in NorthStar Asset Management, down by 2% over the quarter. With hedgies’ capital changing hands, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Marc Lisker, Glenn Fuhrman and John Phelan’s MSDC Management has the largest position in NorthStar Asset Management Group Inc (NYSE:NSAM), worth close to $165.2 million, comprising 13.3% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is David Abrams’ Abrams Capital Management, with a $141 million position; the fund has 7% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other peers that hold long positions encompass Seth Klarman’s Baupost Groupand Brett Barakett’s Tremblant Capital.

Since NorthStar Asset Management Group Inc (NYSE:NSAM) has experienced declining sentiment from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s safe to say that there was a specific group of hedgies that elected to cut their entire stakes during the third quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson’s Adage Capital Management dropped the biggest stake of all the hedgies followed by Insider Monkey, comprising about $63.1 million in stock. Michael Reeber’s fund, Andalusian Capital Partners, also dropped its stock, about $4.3 million worth.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as NorthStar Asset Management Group Inc (NYSE:NSAM) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Synaptics, Incorporated (NASDAQ:SYNA), Minerals Technologies Inc (NYSE:MTX), Sanmina Corp (NASDAQ:SANM), and On Assignment, Inc. (NYSE:ASGN). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to NSAM’s market value.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 19 investors holding long positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $154 million. That figure was $1.04 billion in NSAM’s case. Synaptics, Incorporated (NASDAQ:SYNA) is the most popular stock in this table, while Minerals Technologies Inc (NYSE:MTX) is the least popular one with only 17 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks NorthStar Asset Management Group Inc (NYSE:NSAM) is more popular among hedge funds. Considering that hedge funds are fond of this stock in relation to its market cap peers, it may be a good idea to analyze it in detail and potentially include it in your portfolio.