Almost a month after Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, the market’s solid perfromance has surprised even seasoned investors. Although the S&P initially sold off on the day after the election, the S&P 500 and Dow are now very close to all-time highs. While the thought of trade wars is never good for investors, the prospect of tax cuts, more buybacks, and acceptable inflation in the future certainly help make the bull case for buying stocks (and leaving bonds) more appealing.
Given that food and consumer stocks are closer to bonds in terms of the risk spectrum than tech, energy, and other stocks, let’s take a look at some of the stocks that the smart money crowd left in Q3, including Newell Brands Inc (NYSE:NWL), Bunge Ltd (NYSE:BG), Mondelez International Inc (NASDAQ:MDLZ), Cal-Maine Foods Inc (NASDAQ:CALM), and Nautilus, Inc. (NYSE:NLS).
At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 18% gains over the past 12 months, more than doubling the 8% returns enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs.
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Newell Brands Inc (NYSE:NWL), a global consumer goods company engaged in manufacture of branded products, reported $3.9 billion in revenues and $186 million in net income during the third quarter, when compared to $3.85 billion and $135 million respectively, in the quarter earlier. The company also sold off its tools business to Stanley Black & Decker (NYSE:SWK) for $1.95 billion in cash in October this year. The stock has a mean recommendation of buy and has returned almost 5% year to date. Of the 742 elite funds we track, 39 funds owned $1.71 billion of Newell Brands Inc (NYSE:NWL) and accounted for 18.20% of the float on September 30, versus 51 funds and $2.38 billion respectively on June 30.
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Food and agribusiness company Bunge Ltd (NYSE:BG) saw smart funds holdings in it decline by $12.2 million quarter over quarter, as per our database. During the third quarter, the number of elite funds having Bunge Ltd (NYSE:BG) in their portfolios came down to 23 from 33 in the quarter earlier. Among some of the more notable hedge fund moves, D.E Shaw sold 1.33 million of shares in the stock bringing down its stake down to 0.18% from 0.33% previously. Two Sigma Partners and Global Thematic Partners were some of the other large sellers during the third quarter. Bunge Ltd (NYSE:BG) has a dividend yield of 2.35% and reported revenues of $11.4 billion for the quarter ended September as compared to $10.5 billion for the earlier quarter. The company’s third quarter profits were hit by lower soybean and corn production in South America, but the management expects the business to normalize next quarter.
