Smart Money Ownership of Columbia Sportswear Company (COLM) Hits Low Point

Insider Monkey finished processing more than 700 13F filings made by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of September 30. In this article we are going to take a look at smart money sentiment towards Columbia Sportswear Company (NASDAQ:COLM) .

Columbia Sportswear Company (NASDAQ:COLM) shareholders have witnessed a decrease in hedge fund interest in recent months. 17 hedge funds that we track were long the stock on September 30. There were 20 hedge funds in our database with COLM holdings 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 Embraer SA (ADR) (NYSE:ERJ), Teradyne, Inc. (NYSE:TER), and Dunkin Brands Group Inc (NASDAQ:DNKN) 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.

How have hedgies been trading Columbia Sportswear Company (NASDAQ:COLM)?

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 17 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a 15% drop from the second quarter of 2016, as hedge fund ownership falls to a yearly low. By comparison, 21 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in COLM heading into this year. Now then, let’s review 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, Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates has the number one position in Columbia Sportswear Company (NASDAQ:COLM), worth close to $47.3 million. The second largest stake is held by Columbus Circle Investors, part of Principal Global Investors, holding a $16.2 million position. Other professional money managers with similar optimism contain Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, David E. Shaw’s D E Shaw, and Ed Beddow and William Tichy’s Beddow 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.

Now that we’ve mentioned the most bullish investors, let’s also take a look at some funds that sold off their entire stakes in the stock during the third quarter. Intriguingly, Joel Greenblatt’s Gotham Asset Management sold off the biggest stake of all the hedgies followed by Insider Monkey, worth close to $8.5 million in stock. Robert Pohly’s fund, Samlyn Capital, also dropped its stock, about $4.2 million worth.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Columbia Sportswear Company (NASDAQ:COLM). We will take a look at Embraer SA (ADR) (NYSE:ERJ), Teradyne, Inc. (NYSE:TER), Dunkin Brands Group Inc (NASDAQ:DNKN), and Arris Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:ARRS). This group of stocks’ market values match COLM’s market value.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 24 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $552 million. That figure was $108 million in COLM’s case. Arris Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:ARRS) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Embraer SA (ADR) (NYSE:ERJ) is the least popular one with only 11 bullish hedge fund positions. Columbia Sportswear Company (NASDAQ:COLM) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average and it doesn’t have a lot of money invested in it. This is a slightly negative signal and we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard ARRS might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.

Disclosure: None