Insider Monkey has processed numerous 13F filings of hedge funds and successful value investors to create an extensive database of hedge fund holdings. The 13F filings show the hedge funds’ and successful investors’ positions as of the end of the first quarter. You can find articles about an individual hedge fund’s trades on numerous financial news websites. However, in this article we will take a look at their collective moves over the last 4.5 years and analyze what the smart money thinks of Pyxus International, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYX) based on that data.
Is Pyxus International, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYX) the right pick for your portfolio? The best stock pickers are buying. The number of long hedge fund bets increased by 1 lately. Our calculations also showed that PYX 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.
To most market participants, hedge funds are seen as unimportant, outdated investment vehicles of the past. While there are over 8000 funds in operation at present, Our researchers choose to focus on the masters of this club, approximately 850 funds. Most estimates calculate that this group of people administer most of the hedge fund industry’s total capital, and by shadowing their matchless equity investments, Insider Monkey has found numerous investment strategies that have historically beaten the broader indices. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy beat 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 36% since February 2017 (through May 18th) even though the market was up 30% during the same period. We just shared a list of 8 short targets in our latest quarterly update .
Jeffrey Altman of Owl Creek Asset Management
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 go over the recent hedge fund action surrounding Pyxus International, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYX).
Hedge fund activity in Pyxus International, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYX)
At Q1’s end, a total of 5 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 25% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 10 hedge funds with a bullish position in PYX a year ago. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).
Among these funds, D E Shaw held the most valuable stake in Pyxus International, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYX), which was worth $0.8 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was Citadel Investment Group which amassed $0.5 million worth of shares. OZ Management, Owl Creek Asset Management, and Citadel Investment Group were also very fond of the stock, becoming one of the largest hedge fund holders of the company. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Owl Creek Asset Management allocated the biggest weight to Pyxus International, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYX), around 0.02% of its 13F portfolio. Aequim Alternative Investments is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 0.01 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to PYX.
With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, some big names have been driving this bullishness. Owl Creek Asset Management, managed by Jeffrey Altman, established the most outsized position in Pyxus International, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYX). Owl Creek Asset Management had $0.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group also made a $0.2 million investment in the stock during the quarter.
Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Pyxus International, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYX). These stocks are Hallador Energy Co (NASDAQ:HNRG), ClearOne Incoprorated (NASDAQ:CLRO), Blue Hat Interactive Entertainment Technology (NASDAQ:BHAT), and Great Elm Capital Corp. (NASDAQ:GECC). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble PYX’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| HNRG | 9 | 1183 | 1 |
| CLRO | 1 | 450 | 0 |
| BHAT | 1 | 12 | 0 |
| GECC | 3 | 522 | 0 |
| Average | 3.5 | 542 | 0.25 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 3.5 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1 million. That figure was $2 million in PYX’s case. Hallador Energy Co (NASDAQ:HNRG) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand ClearOne Incoprorated (NASDAQ:CLRO) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Pyxus International, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYX) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. Our calculations showed that top 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds 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 beat the market by 13.2 percentage points. Unfortunately PYX wasn’t nearly as popular as these 10 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on PYX were disappointed as the stock returned -9.6% during the same time period 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 many of these stocks already outperformed the market so far this year.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.