Where Do Hedge Funds Stand On Reliant Bancorp, Inc. (RBNC)?

While the market driven by short-term sentiment influenced by the accommodative interest rate environment in the US, virus news and stimulus spending, many smart money investors are starting to get cautious towards the current bull run since March, 2020 and hedging or reducing many of their long positions. Some fund managers are betting on Dow hitting 40,000 to generate strong returns. However, as we know, big investors usually buy stocks with strong fundamentals that can deliver gains both in bull and bear markets, which is why we believe we can profit from imitating them. In this article, we are going to take a look at the smart money sentiment surrounding Reliant Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:RBNC).

Reliant Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:RBNC) has experienced an increase in hedge fund sentiment in recent months. Reliant Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:RBNC) was in 6 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic was previously 5. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. There were 4 hedge funds in our database with RBNC positions at the end of the fourth quarter. Our calculations also showed that RBNC isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

In the financial world there are a large number of tools investors have at their disposal to grade stocks. A pair of the most under-the-radar tools are hedge fund and insider trading indicators. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best fund managers can outperform the broader indices by a solid amount. Insider Monkey’s monthly stock picks returned 206.8% since March 2017 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 115 percentage points (see the details here). That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is a useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, an activist hedge fund owns nearly 40% of this $24 biotech stock and is trying to buy the rest for around $50. So, we recommended a long position to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 10 best battery 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 we’re going to analyze the key hedge fund action surrounding Reliant Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:RBNC).

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

Heading into the second quarter of 2021, a total of 6 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 50% from the fourth quarter of 2020. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards RBNC over the last 23 quarters. So, let’s examine which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Anton Schutz’s Mendon Capital Advisors has the number one position in Reliant Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:RBNC), worth close to $6.1 million, accounting for 2.3% of its total 13F portfolio. On Mendon Capital Advisors’s heels is Joseph P. Colmery and Steven J. Didion of JCSD Capital, with a $3.5 million position; the fund has 3.4% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining hedge funds and institutional investors with similar optimism consist of Renaissance Technologies, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and Roger Ibbotson’s Zebra Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position JCSD Capital allocated the biggest weight to Reliant Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:RBNC), around 3.37% of its 13F portfolio. Mendon Capital Advisors is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 2.26 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to RBNC.

As one would reasonably expect, specific money managers have been driving this bullishness. Citadel Investment Group, managed by Ken Griffin, assembled the largest position in Reliant Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:RBNC). Citadel Investment Group had $0.6 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Roger Ibbotson’s Zebra Capital Management also initiated a $0.3 million position during the quarter. The only other fund with a new position in the stock is Louis Navellier’s Navellier & Associates.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Reliant Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:RBNC) but similarly valued. These stocks are Yiren Digital Ltd. (NYSE:YRD), TrueCar Inc (NASDAQ:TRUE), Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior, S.A. (NYSE:BLX), Lawson Products, Inc. (NASDAQ:LAWS), Cross Country Healthcare, Inc. (NASDAQ:CCRN), Noodles & Co (NASDAQ:NDLS), and Teekay Tankers Ltd. (NYSE:TNK). This group of stocks’ market values are closest to RBNC’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 9.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $48 million. That figure was $13 million in RBNC’s case. Noodles & Co (NASDAQ:NDLS) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior, S.A. (NYSE:BLX) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Reliant Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:RBNC) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for RBNC is 51.7. 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 19.3% in 2021 through June 25th and surpassed the market again by 4.8 percentage points. Unfortunately RBNC wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); RBNC investors were disappointed as the stock returned -2.1% since the end of March (through 6/25) 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.