Movado Group, Inc (MOV): Are Hedge Funds Right to be Bullish?

Is Movado Group, Inc (NYSE:MOV) a good investment right now? We check hedge fund and billionaire investor sentiment before delving into hours of research. Hedge funds spend millions of dollars on Ivy League graduates, expert networks, and get tips from industry insiders. They fail miserably sometimes but historically their consensus stock picks outperformed the market after adjusting for known risk factors.

Movado Group, Inc (NYSE:MOV) was in 21 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. MOV has seen an increase in hedge fund sentiment of late. There were 17 hedge funds in our database with MOV positions at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare MOV to other stocks including Dorian LPG Ltd (NYSE:LPG), Ellington Financial LLC (NYSE:EFC), and Capella Education Company (NASDAQ:CPLA) to get a better sense of its popularity.

To the average investor there are a large number of signals shareholders have at their disposal to value their holdings. A couple of the most innovative signals are hedge fund and insider trading signals. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the best money managers can beat the broader indices by a significant margin (see the details here).

With all of this in mind, we’re going to analyze the new action surrounding Movado Group, Inc (NYSE:MOV).

How have hedgies been trading Movado Group, Inc (NYSE:MOV)?

Heading into Q4, a total of 21 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a 24% rise from one quarter earlier. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes substantially (or had already accumulated large positions).

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates has the biggest position in Movado Group, Inc (NYSE:MOV), worth close to $63.1 million, accounting for 0.3% of its total 13F portfolio. The second-largest stake is held by Fisher Asset Management, managed by Ken Fisher, which holds a $4.2 million position; the fund has less than 0.1% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other professional money managers that are bullish consist of Murray Stahl’s Horizon Asset Management, Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital, and Israel Englander’s Millennium Management.