The worries about the election and the ongoing uncertainty about the path of interest-rate increases have been keeping investors on the sidelines. Of course, most hedge funds and other asset managers have been underperforming main stock market indices since the middle of 2015. Interestingly though, smaller-cap stocks registered their best performance relative to the large-capitalization stocks since the end of the June quarter, suggesting that this may be the best time to take a cue from their stock picks. In fact, the Russell 2000 Index gained more than 15% since the beginning of the third quarter, while the Standard and Poor’s 500 benchmark returned less than 6%. This article will lay out and discuss the hedge fund and institutional investor sentiment towards W&T Offshore, Inc. (NYSE:WTI) .
W&T Offshore, Inc. (NYSE:WTI) has seen an increase in support from the world’s most successful money managers recently. WTI was in 10 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2016. There were 6 hedge funds in our database with WTI positions at the end of the previous quarter. The level and the change in hedge fund popularity aren’t the only variables you need to analyze to decipher hedge funds’ perspectives. A stock may witness a boost in popularity but it may still be less popular than similarly priced stocks. That’s why at the end of this article we will examine companies such as Gulf Island Fabrication, Inc. (NASDAQ:GIFI), Hutchinson Technology Incorporated (NASDAQ:HTCH), and Kura Oncology Inc (NASDAQ:KURA) to gather more data points.
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.
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With all of this in mind, let’s take a glance at the recent action encompassing W&T Offshore, Inc. (NYSE:WTI).
Hedge fund activity in W&T Offshore, Inc. (NYSE:WTI)
Heading into the fourth quarter of 2016, a total of 10 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a growth of 67% from the second quarter of 2016. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards WTI over the last 5 quarters. So, let’s examine 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, Mark T. Gallogly’s Centerbridge Partners has the largest position in W&T Offshore, Inc. (NYSE:WTI), worth close to $7.3 million. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Cliff Asness of AQR Capital Management which holds a $1.1 million position. Remaining professional money managers that hold long positions include Murray Stahl’s Horizon Asset Management, William Michaelcheck’s Mariner Investment Group and Andrew Sandler’s Sandler Capital Management. We should note that none of these hedge funds are among our list of the 100 best performing hedge funds which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-microcap stocks.
