Where Do Hedge Funds Stand On First Community Bancshares Inc (FCBC)?

The 800+ hedge funds and famous money managers tracked by Insider Monkey have already compiled and submitted their 13F filings for the third quarter, which unveil their equity positions as of September 30. We went through these filings, fixed typos and other more significant errors and identified the changes in hedge fund portfolios. Our extensive review of these public filings is finally over, so this article is set to reveal the smart money sentiment towards First Community Bancshares Inc (NASDAQ:FCBC).

First Community Bancshares Inc (NASDAQ:FCBC) shares haven’t seen a lot of action during the second quarter. Overall, hedge fund sentiment was unchanged. The stock was in 3 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. Our calculations also showed that FCBC 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). At the end of this article we will also compare FCBC to other stocks including Modine Manufacturing Company (NYSE:MOD), Gamco Investors Inc. (NYSE:GBL), and Seneca Foods Corp. (NASDAQ:SENEB) to get a better sense of its popularity.

Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

To the average investor there are plenty of tools stock traders use to evaluate stocks. A couple of the less known tools are hedge fund and insider trading interest. Our researchers have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the top investment managers can trounce the market by a healthy amount (see the details here).

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 10 most profitable companies in the world 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. With all of this in mind we’re going to take a look at the recent hedge fund action surrounding First Community Bancshares Inc (NASDAQ:FCBC).

How are hedge funds trading First Community Bancshares Inc (NASDAQ:FCBC)?

At third quarter’s end, a total of 3 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 0% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards FCBC over the last 21 quarters. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Renaissance Technologies, holds the largest position in First Community Bancshares Inc (NASDAQ:FCBC). Renaissance Technologies has a $4.2 million position in the stock, comprising less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio. On Renaissance Technologies’s heels is Two Sigma Advisors, led by John Overdeck and David Siegel, holding a $0.7 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Winton Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to First Community Bancshares Inc (NASDAQ:FCBC), around 0.02% of its 13F portfolio. Renaissance Technologies is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.0042 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to FCBC.

Earlier we told you that the aggregate hedge fund interest in the stock was unchanged and we view this as a negative development. Even though there weren’t any hedge funds dumping their holdings during the third quarter, there weren’t any hedge funds initiating brand new positions. This indicates that hedge funds, at the very best, perceive this stock as dead money and they haven’t identified any viable catalysts that can attract investor attention.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as First Community Bancshares Inc (NASDAQ:FCBC) but similarly valued. These stocks are Modine Manufacturing Company (NYSE:MOD), Gamco Investors Inc. (NYSE:GBL), Seneca Foods Corp. (NASDAQ:SENEB), EVI Industries Inc (NYSE:EVI), CorePoint Lodging Inc. (NYSE:CPLG), Repro Med Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:KRMD), and HEXO Corp. (NYSE:HEXO). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to FCBC’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 7.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $16 million. That figure was $5 million in FCBC’s case. Repro Med Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:KRMD) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand EVI Industries Inc (NYSE:EVI) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. First Community Bancshares Inc (NASDAQ:FCBC) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for FCBC is 22.1. 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 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 28.1% in 2020 through November 23rd and still beat the market by 15.4 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on FCBC as the stock returned 21.8% since the end of the third quarter (through 11/23) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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