Where Do Hedge Funds Stand On Core-Mark Holding Company, Inc. (CORE)?

With the third-quarter round of 13F filings behind us it is time to take a look at the stocks in which some of the best money managers in the world preferred to invest or sell heading into the fourth quarter. One of these stocks was Core-Mark Holding Company, Inc. (NASDAQ:CORE).

Core-Mark Holding Company, Inc. (NASDAQ:CORE) investors should be aware of an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers lately. Core-Mark Holding Company, Inc. (NASDAQ:CORE) was in 20 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 24. Our calculations also showed that CORE isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 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.

If you’d ask most traders, hedge funds are perceived as underperforming, outdated financial tools of yesteryear. While there are more than 8000 funds trading at present, Our experts choose to focus on the leaders of this club, around 850 funds. Most estimates calculate that this group of people handle the lion’s share of the hedge fund industry’s total capital, and by monitoring their matchless stock picks, Insider Monkey has uncovered a few investment strategies that have historically beaten Mr. Market. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy surpassed 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 13% since February 2017 (through November 17th) even though the market was up 65% during the same period. We just shared a list of 6 short targets in our latest quarterly update .

At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost real estate prices. So, we recommended this real estate stock to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 15 best blue chip stocks to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. 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 website. Now we’re going to view the fresh hedge fund action regarding Core-Mark Holding Company, Inc. (NASDAQ:CORE).

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

At the end of September, a total of 20 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 33% from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in CORE over the last 21 quarters. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were adding to their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

More specifically, Arrowstreet Capital was the largest shareholder of Core-Mark Holding Company, Inc. (NASDAQ:CORE), with a stake worth $12.8 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Arrowstreet Capital was Renaissance Technologies, which amassed a stake valued at $8.9 million. D E Shaw, Marshall Wace LLP, and Algert Coldiron Investors 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 Zebra Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Core-Mark Holding Company, Inc. (NASDAQ:CORE), around 0.97% of its 13F portfolio. Algert Coldiron Investors is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 0.76 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CORE.

Consequently, specific money managers have been driving this bullishness. Marshall Wace LLP, managed by Paul Marshall and Ian Wace, established the biggest position in Core-Mark Holding Company, Inc. (NASDAQ:CORE). Marshall Wace LLP had $3.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group also made a $1 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new CORE positions are Noam Gottesman’s GLG Partners, Donald Sussman’s Paloma Partners, and Greg Eisner’s Engineers Gate Manager.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Core-Mark Holding Company, Inc. (NASDAQ:CORE). We will take a look at Broadmark Realty Capital Inc. (NYSE:BRMK), Mesa Laboratories, Inc. (NASDAQ:MLAB), Nurix Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:NRIX), Weis Markets, Inc. (NYSE:WMK), Arbor Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE:ABR), AMC Networks Inc (NASDAQ:AMCX), and Frontline Ltd (NYSE:FRO). This group of stocks’ market values resemble CORE’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 13.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $110 million. That figure was $45 million in CORE’s case. AMC Networks Inc (NASDAQ:AMCX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Mesa Laboratories, Inc. (NASDAQ:MLAB) is the least popular one with only 8 bullish hedge fund positions. Core-Mark Holding Company, Inc. (NASDAQ:CORE) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CORE is 65. 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 positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. Our calculations showed that top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.3% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10 percentage points. These stocks gained 30.7% in 2020 through December 14th and beat the market again by 15.8 percentage points. Unfortunately CORE wasn’t nearly as popular as these 20 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on CORE were disappointed as the stock returned 5.7% since the end of September (through 12/14) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds as many of these stocks already outperformed the market so far this year.

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