5 Best Stocks of 2021

4. Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 55  

Year-To-Date Gain: 129%  

Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F), the Michigan-based automaker, has pivoted to electric vehicles this year, announcing the flagship all-electric F-150 truck and several other EV models. The stock has been given a further boost by the recent approval of the American Jobs Plan of US President Biden that will increase federal tax credits for EV makers who use union labor to $12,500 from $7,500, incentivizing the production of more EVs. 

Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) has also enjoyed increased interest from the retail investor community that has discussed the new EV models and business strategy of the company at length on internet platforms like Reddit, improving the visibility of the firm to young investors.

At the end of the second quarter of 2021, 55 hedge funds in the database of Insider Monkey held stakes worth $2.10 billion in Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F), up from 49 in the preceding quarter worth $2.19 billion.

In its Q1 2020 investor letter, Greenlight Capital Fund, an asset management firm, highlighted a few stocks and Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) was one of them. Here is what the fund said:

“General Motors (GM) was a disappointment. The damage from last year’s strike consumed most of the cash flow GM would have otherwise generated in 2019. We had expected a strong bounce back in earnings and cash flow in 2020, but the annual guidance, while meeting Wall Street expectations, was worse than we expected. Further, the cash burned during the strike needed to be re-earned in order to protect GM’s investment grade rating. Pre-crisis, there would have been, at best, a minimal share repurchase late in the year. At the analyst day, our hopes that 2020 would finally be the year were dashed. We sold our stock. Over our five-year holding period, we made a 9.6% IRR on GM. In the difficult environment, its most comparable peer, Ford, lost about half its value.”