Is SILV A Good Stock To Buy Now?

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 third 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 5 years and analyze what the smart money thinks of SilverCrest Metals Inc. (NYSE:SILV) based on that data.

Is SILV a good stock to buy now? SilverCrest Metals Inc. (NYSE:SILV) investors should be aware of an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers of late. SilverCrest Metals Inc. (NYSE:SILV) was in 12 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistics is 11. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. There were 9 hedge funds in our database with SILV holdings at the end of June. Our calculations also showed that SILV 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 most investors, hedge funds are seen as underperforming, old investment vehicles of the past. While there are over 8000 funds with their doors open today, Our researchers look at the moguls of this group, around 850 funds. These hedge fund managers direct the majority of the hedge fund industry’s total capital, and by tailing their first-class stock picks, Insider Monkey has brought to light many investment strategies that have historically outrun the broader indices. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy defeated the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points per annum since its inception in March 2017. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 13% since February 2017 (through November 17th) even though the market was up 65% during the same period. We just shared a list of 6 short targets in our latest quarterly update .

Eric Sprott Sprott Asset Management

Eric Sprott of Sprott Asset Management

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. Keeping this in mind let’s analyze the key hedge fund action encompassing SilverCrest Metals Inc. (NYSE:SILV).

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

At the end of September, a total of 12 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 33% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 3 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in SILV a year ago. So, let’s review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Among these funds, Sprott Asset Management held the most valuable stake in SilverCrest Metals Inc. (NYSE:SILV), which was worth $156.9 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was Waratah Capital Advisors which amassed $14.2 million worth of shares. Millennium Management, Citadel Investment Group, and Arrowstreet Capital 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 Sprott Asset Management allocated the biggest weight to SilverCrest Metals Inc. (NYSE:SILV), around 6.42% of its 13F portfolio. Waratah Capital Advisors is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 1.52 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to SILV.

As industrywide interest jumped, some big names have jumped into SilverCrest Metals Inc. (NYSE:SILV) headfirst. Waratah Capital Advisors, managed by Brad Dunkley and Blair Levinsky, established the largest position in SilverCrest Metals Inc. (NYSE:SILV). Waratah Capital Advisors had $14.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital also made a $3.3 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new SILV investors: Michael Hintze’s CQS Cayman LP, Fred Knoll’s Knoll Capital Management, and Donald Sussman’s Paloma Partners.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to SilverCrest Metals Inc. (NYSE:SILV). We will take a look at Atrion Corporation (NASDAQ:ATRI), Mack Cali Realty Corp (NYSE:CLI), Victory Capital Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:VCTR), Revolve Group, Inc. (NYSE:RVLV), First Bancorp (NYSE:FBP), CSW Industrials, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSWI), and Urban Edge Properties (NYSE:UE). This group of stocks’ market valuations match SILV’s market valuation.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
ATRI 10 57819 -2
CLI 11 39973 -2
VCTR 8 60210 -1
RVLV 21 78858 10
FBP 21 110879 -5
CSWI 16 29403 -3
UE 20 59441 -5
Average 15.3 62369 -1.1

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 15.3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $62 million. That figure was $190 million in SILV’s case. Revolve Group, Inc. (NYSE:RVLV) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Victory Capital Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:VCTR) is the least popular one with only 8 bullish hedge fund positions. SilverCrest Metals Inc. (NYSE:SILV) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for SILV is 53.4. 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. This is a slightly negative signal and we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. 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 surpassed the market again by 16.2 percentage points. Unfortunately SILV wasn’t nearly as popular as these 20 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); SILV investors were disappointed as the stock returned 6.1% since the end of September (through 12/8) 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.

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