Should I Avoid Yandex NV (YNDX)?

In this article we will take a look at whether hedge funds think Yandex NV (NASDAQ:YNDX) is 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, unconventional data sources, expert networks, and get tips from investment bankers and industry insiders. Sure they sometimes fail miserably, but their consensus stock picks historically outperformed the market after adjusting for known risk factors.

Yandex NV (NASDAQ:YNDX) investors should pay attention to a decrease in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds recently. Yandex NV (NASDAQ:YNDX) was in 27 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 48. There were 31 hedge funds in our database with YNDX holdings at the end of June. Our calculations also showed that YNDX isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings).

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium prices have more than doubled over the past year, so we go through lists like the 10 best EV stocks to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. Keeping this in mind we’re going to take a peek at the latest hedge fund action surrounding Yandex NV (NASDAQ:YNDX).

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

At third quarter’s end, a total of 27 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -13% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 33 hedge funds with a bullish position in YNDX a year ago. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

More specifically, Orbis Investment Management was the largest shareholder of Yandex NV (NASDAQ:YNDX), with a stake worth $396.7 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Orbis Investment Management was Fisher Asset Management, which amassed a stake valued at $377.5 million. Egerton Capital Limited, Cadian Capital, and Driehaus Capital 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 Prince Street Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Yandex NV (NASDAQ:YNDX), around 12.42% of its 13F portfolio. Portsea Asset Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 9.12 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to YNDX.

Due to the fact that Yandex NV (NASDAQ:YNDX) has witnessed falling interest from hedge fund managers, we can see that there exists a select few funds that elected to cut their positions entirely by the end of the third quarter. Intriguingly, Guy Shahar’s DSAM Partners said goodbye to the largest investment of all the hedgies watched by Insider Monkey, worth an estimated $3.9 million in stock, and Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp was right behind this move, as the fund said goodbye to about $0.8 million worth. These transactions are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 4 funds by the end of the third quarter.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Yandex NV (NASDAQ:YNDX). We will take a look at Synchrony Financial (NYSE:SYF), WEC Energy Group, Inc. (NYSE:WEC), Occidental Petroleum Corporation (NYSE:OXY), Zebra Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ:ZBRA), PACCAR Inc (NASDAQ:PCAR), Delta Air Lines, Inc. (NYSE:DAL), and Skyworks Solutions Inc (NASDAQ:SWKS). This group of stocks’ market valuations match YNDX’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 39.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1257 million. That figure was $1432 million in YNDX’s case. Occidental Petroleum Corporation (NYSE:OXY) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand PACCAR Inc (NASDAQ:PCAR) is the least popular one with only 26 bullish hedge fund positions. Yandex NV (NASDAQ:YNDX) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for YNDX is 19.3. 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. This is a slightly negative signal and we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. Our calculations showed that top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 31.1% in 2021 through December 9th and surpassed the market again by 5.1 percentage points. Unfortunately YNDX wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); YNDX investors were disappointed as the stock returned -17.6% since the end of September (through 12/9) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market in 2021.

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