Is Seanergy Maritime Holdings Corp. (SHIP) 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 Seanergy Maritime Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:SHIP).

Is Seanergy Maritime Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:SHIP) a good stock to buy now? Hedge funds were buying. The number of bullish hedge fund positions went up by 2 lately. Seanergy Maritime Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:SHIP) was in 4 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistics is 4. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that SHIP 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.

Hedge funds’ reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn’t keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Our research was able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 66 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that’ll significantly underperform the market. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 and they lost 13% through November 17th. That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is an extremely 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 10 most profitable companies in the world 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. Now we’re going to review the fresh hedge fund action surrounding Seanergy Maritime Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:SHIP).

What does smart money think about Seanergy Maritime Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:SHIP)?

At third quarter’s end, a total of 4 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 100% from the second quarter of 2020. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards SHIP over the last 21 quarters. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a few noteworthy hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Hal Mintz’s Sabby Capital has the most valuable position in Seanergy Maritime Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:SHIP), worth close to $2.4 million, amounting to 0.4% of its total 13F portfolio. On Sabby Capital’s heels is Sander Gerber of Hudson Bay Capital Management, with a $0 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other professional money managers that hold long positions comprise Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Sabby Capital allocated the biggest weight to Seanergy Maritime Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:SHIP), around 0.36% of its 13F portfolio. Hudson Bay Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.0002 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to SHIP.

As industrywide interest jumped, some big names have jumped into Seanergy Maritime Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:SHIP) headfirst. Sabby Capital, managed by Hal Mintz, initiated the most outsized position in Seanergy Maritime Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:SHIP). Sabby Capital had $2.4 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group also initiated a $0 million position during the quarter. The only other fund with a new position in the stock is Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Seanergy Maritime Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:SHIP). These stocks are Adial Pharmaceuticals, Inc (NASDAQ:ADIL), Patriot Transportation Holding Inc (NASDAQ:PATI), Four Seasons Education (Cayman) Inc. (NYSE:FEDU), Achieve Life Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:ACHV), Arcadia Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:RKDA), HV Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:HVBC), and Wireless Telecom Group, Inc. (NYSE:WTT). All of these stocks’ market caps are similar to SHIP’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 1.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $2 million. That figure was $2 million in SHIP’s case. Patriot Transportation Holding Inc (NASDAQ:PATI) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Adial Pharmaceuticals, Inc (NASDAQ:ADIL) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Seanergy Maritime Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:SHIP) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for SHIP is 87. 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 November 27th and still beat the market by 16.1 percentage points. Unfortunately SHIP wasn’t nearly as popular as these 20 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on SHIP were disappointed as the stock returned 0% since the end of the third quarter (through 11/27) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market in 2020.

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