Nomura Holdings, Inc. (NMR): Hedge Funds In Wait-and-See Mode

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. Insider Monkey finished processing 821 13F filings submitted by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of March 31st, 2020. In this article we are going to take a look at smart money sentiment towards Nomura Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:NMR).

Nomura Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:NMR) shares haven’t seen a lot of action during the first quarter. Overall, hedge fund sentiment was unchanged. The stock was in 5 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2020. 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 Markel Corporation (NYSE:MKL), Seagate Technology plc (NASDAQ:STX), and Galapagos NV (NASDAQ:GLPG) to gather more data points. Our calculations also showed that NMR isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 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.

So, why do we pay attention to hedge fund sentiment before making any investment decisions? Our research has shown that hedge funds’ small-cap stock picks managed to beat the market by double digits annually between 1999 and 2016, but the margin of outperformance has been declining in recent years. Nevertheless, we were still able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 58 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that underperformed the market by 10 percentage points annually between 2006 and 2017. Interestingly the margin of underperformance of these stocks has been increasing in recent years. Investors who are long the market and short these stocks would have returned more than 27% annually between 2015 and 2017. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 in our quarterly newsletter. Even if you aren’t comfortable with shorting stocks, you should at least avoid initiating long positions in stocks that are in our short portfolio.

At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, 2020’s unprecedented market conditions provide us with the highest number of trading opportunities in a decade. So we are checking out stocks recommended/scorned by legendary Bill Miller. We interview hedge fund managers and ask them about their best ideas. If you want to find out the best healthcare stock to buy right now, you can watch our latest hedge fund manager interview here. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. Our best call in 2020 was shorting the market when the S&P 500 was trading at 3150 after realizing the coronavirus pandemic’s significance before most investors. Now let’s take a glance at the key hedge fund action surrounding Nomura Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:NMR).

Hedge fund activity in Nomura Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:NMR)

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 5 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 0% from the fourth quarter of 2019. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in NMR over the last 18 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, Renaissance Technologies has the largest position in Nomura Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:NMR), worth close to $8.7 million, accounting for less than 0.1%% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by LMR Partners, led by Ben Levine, Andrew Manuel and Stefan Renold, holding a $4.7 million position; the fund has 0.4% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish include D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position LMR Partners allocated the biggest weight to Nomura Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:NMR), around 0.39% of its 13F portfolio. Renaissance Technologies is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.01 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to NMR.

Earlier we told you that the aggregate hedge fund interest in the stock was unchanged and we view this as a negative development. Even though there weren’t any hedge funds dumping their holdings during the first quarter, there weren’t any hedge funds initiating brand new positions. This indicates that hedge funds, at the very best, perceive this stock as dead money and they haven’t identified any viable catalysts that can attract investor attention.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Nomura Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:NMR). We will take a look at Markel Corporation (NYSE:MKL), Seagate Technology plc (NASDAQ:STX), Galapagos NV (NASDAQ:GLPG), and The J.M. Smucker Company (NYSE:SJM). This group of stocks’ market valuations are similar to NMR’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 28.75 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $955 million. That figure was $18 million in NMR’s case. The J.M. Smucker Company (NYSE:SJM) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Galapagos NV (NASDAQ:GLPG) is the least popular one with only 15 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Nomura Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:NMR) is even less popular than GLPG. Hedge funds dodged a bullet by taking a bearish stance towards NMR. Our calculations showed that the top 10 most popular hedge fund stocks returned 41.4% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10.1 percentage points. These stocks gained 8.3% in 2020 through the end of May but managed to beat the market by 13.2 percentage points. Unfortunately NMR wasn’t nearly as popular as these 10 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was very bearish); NMR investors were disappointed as the stock returned -0.2% during the second quarter (through the end of May) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market so far in 2020.

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