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 866 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 ViacomCBS Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAC).
Is ViacomCBS Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAC) the right pick for your portfolio? The smart money was getting more bullish. The number of bullish hedge fund positions went up by 45 recently. ViacomCBS Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAC) was in 89 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic was previously 64. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that VIAC isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).
Hedge funds’ reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn’t keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Hedge funds have more than $3.5 trillion in assets under management, so you can’t expect their entire portfolios to beat the market by large margins. Our research was able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 115 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). So you can still find a lot of gems by following hedge funds’ moves today.
At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium mining is one of the fastest growing industries right now, so we are checking out stock pitches like this emerging lithium stock. 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. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our homepage. Keeping this in mind let’s take a look at the fresh hedge fund action regarding ViacomCBS Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAC).
Do Hedge Funds Think VIAC Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At Q1’s end, a total of 89 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 102% from the fourth quarter of 2020. By comparison, 54 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in VIAC a year ago. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).
The largest stake in ViacomCBS Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAC) was held by Millennium Management, which reported holding $259.2 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Renaissance Technologies with a $254.6 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Laurion Capital Management, Soros Fund Management, and Citadel Investment Group. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Element Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to ViacomCBS Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAC), around 11.62% of its 13F portfolio. Voleon Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 10.14 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to VIAC.
Consequently, key hedge funds have jumped into ViacomCBS Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAC) headfirst. Renaissance Technologies, established the most valuable position in ViacomCBS Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAC). Renaissance Technologies had $254.6 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. George Soros’s Soros Fund Management also made a $194.3 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are David Tepper’s Appaloosa Management LP, D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw, and Parag Vora’s HG Vora Capital Management.
Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to ViacomCBS Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAC). We will take a look at Okta, Inc. (NASDAQ:OKTA), Fastenal Company (NASDAQ:FAST), Williams Companies, Inc. (NYSE:WMB), Verisk Analytics, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRSK), Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY), Waste Connections, Inc. (NYSE:WCN), and ResMed Inc. (NYSE:RMD). All of these stocks’ market caps are similar to VIAC’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| OKTA | 48 | 1616565 | -13 |
| FAST | 24 | 576286 | -6 |
| WMB | 34 | 475466 | -4 |
| VRSK | 34 | 1584703 | 2 |
| BBY | 33 | 957600 | -5 |
| WCN | 31 | 822237 | -4 |
| RMD | 25 | 313736 | -2 |
| Average | 32.7 | 906656 | -4.6 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 32.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $907 million. That figure was $2350 million in VIAC’s case. Okta, Inc. (NASDAQ:OKTA) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Fastenal Company (NASDAQ:FAST) is the least popular one with only 24 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks ViacomCBS Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAC) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for VIAC is 90. 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. 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 25.8% in 2021 through August 6th and still beat the market by 6.7 percentage points. Unfortunately VIAC wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on VIAC were disappointed as the stock returned -7.5% since the end of the first quarter (through 8/6) 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 since 2019.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
