Is UE A Good Stock To Buy Now?

A whopping number of 13F filings filed with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has been processed by Insider Monkey so that individual investors can look at the overall hedge fund sentiment towards the stocks included in their watchlists. These freshly-submitted public filings disclose money managers’ equity positions as of the end of the three-month period that ended September 30, so let’s proceed with the discussion of the hedge fund sentiment on Urban Edge Properties (NYSE:UE).

Is UE a good stock to buy now? Urban Edge Properties (NYSE:UE) investors should pay attention to a decrease in support from the world’s most elite money managers of late. Urban Edge Properties (NYSE:UE) was in 20 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistic is 25. Our calculations also showed that UE 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 traders, hedge funds are assumed to be unimportant, old financial vehicles of yesteryear. While there are greater than 8000 funds with their doors open today, Our experts look at the elite of this group, approximately 850 funds. These investment experts direct the majority of the smart money’s total asset base, and by paying attention to their top investments, Insider Monkey has figured out various investment strategies that have historically outpaced the broader indices. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy surpassed 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 .

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. Now we’re going to take a look at the new hedge fund action regarding Urban Edge Properties (NYSE:UE).

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

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 20 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -20% from the previous quarter. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in UE over the last 21 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, Carlson Capital, managed by Clint Carlson, holds the largest position in Urban Edge Properties (NYSE:UE). Carlson Capital has a $13.3 million position in the stock, comprising 0.4% of its 13F portfolio. On Carlson Capital’s heels is Lakewood Capital Management, led by Anthony Bozza, holding a $11.7 million position; 0.6% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Other hedge funds and institutional investors that hold long positions contain D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw, Daniel Johnson’s Gillson Capital and Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Gillson Capital allocated the biggest weight to Urban Edge Properties (NYSE:UE), around 1.08% of its 13F portfolio. Lakewood Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.57 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to UE.

Judging by the fact that Urban Edge Properties (NYSE:UE) has experienced declining sentiment from the aggregate hedge fund industry, logic holds that there exists a select few hedge funds that slashed their full holdings by the end of the third quarter. At the top of the heap, Eduardo Abush’s Waterfront Capital Partners said goodbye to the biggest position of the 750 funds monitored by Insider Monkey, worth an estimated $12.5 million in stock, and Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management was right behind this move, as the fund cut about $6.4 million worth. These moves are intriguing to say the least, as total hedge fund interest was cut by 5 funds by the end of the third quarter.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Urban Edge Properties (NYSE:UE). We will take a look at Banner Corporation (NASDAQ:BANR), The Bank of N.T. Butterfield & Son Limited (NYSE:NTB), Repare Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:RPTX), Tronox Holdings Plc (NYSE:TROX), Enerpac Tool Group Corp. (NYSE:EPAC), Radware Ltd. (NASDAQ:RDWR), and Plains GP Holdings LP (NASDAQ:PAGP). This group of stocks’ market values match UE’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 14.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $135 million. That figure was $59 million in UE’s case. Tronox Holdings Plc (NYSE:TROX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Radware Ltd. (NASDAQ:RDWR) is the least popular one with only 10 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Urban Edge Properties (NYSE:UE) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for UE is 74. 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 returned 30.7% in 2020 through December 14th but still managed to beat the market by 15.8 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on UE as the stock returned 41.6% since the end of September (through 12/14) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin. Hedge funds were clearly right about piling into this stock relative to other stocks with similar market capitalizations.

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