Is Southern First Bancshares, Inc. (SFST) A Good Stock To Buy?

Insider Monkey finished processing more than 700 13F filings made by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of September 30. What do these smart investors think about Southern First Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:SFST)?

Hedge fund interest in Southern First Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:SFST) shares was flat at the end of last quarter. This is usually a negative indicator. At the end of this article we will also compare SFST to other stocks including L.B. Foster Company (NASDAQ:FSTR), Summit Therapeutics PLC (ADR) (NASDAQ:SMMT), and Cenveo, Inc. (NYSE:CVO) to get a better sense of its popularity.

At the moment there are a lot of tools stock market investors can use to assess stocks. A couple of the most under-the-radar tools are hedge fund and insider trading signals. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the elite fund managers can outperform their index-focused peers by a healthy margin (see the details here).

With all of this in mind, let’s take a gander at the key action regarding Southern First Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:SFST).

How are hedge funds trading Southern First Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:SFST)?

At Q3’s end, a total of 4 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, unchanged from one quarter earlier. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes substantially (or already accumulated large positions).

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Emanuel J. Friedman’s EJF Capital has the most valuable position in Southern First Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:SFST), worth close to $10.4 million, accounting for 0.5% of its total 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Basswood Capital, managed by Matthew Lindenbaum, which holds an $4.2 million position; 0.2% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Other peers that hold long positions encompass Paul Magidson, Jonathan Cohen and Ostrom Enders’s Castine Capital Management, and Anton Schutz’s Mendon Capital Advisors.