Cohen & Steers, Inc. (CNS): Are Hedge Funds Right About This Stock?

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. We have processed the filings of the more than 866 world-class investment firms that we track and now have access to the collective wisdom contained in these filings, which are based on their March 31st holdings, data that is available nowhere else. Should you consider Cohen & Steers, Inc. (NYSE:CNS) for your portfolio? We’ll look to this invaluable collective wisdom for the answer.

Cohen & Steers, Inc. (NYSE:CNS) investors should be aware of an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers of late. Cohen & Steers, Inc. (NYSE:CNS) was in 17 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 22. There were 15 hedge funds in our database with CNS holdings at the end of December. Our calculations also showed that CNS isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

To the average investor there are a multitude of signals stock traders employ to size up publicly traded companies. A pair of the most under-the-radar signals are hedge fund and insider trading activity. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the top investment managers can outclass the market by a significant margin (see the details here). Also, our monthly newsletter’s portfolio of long stock picks returned 206.8% since March 2017 (through May 2021) and beat the S&P 500 Index by more than 115 percentage points. You can download a sample issue of this newsletter on our website .

Mario Gabelli of GAMCO Investors

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, pet market is growing at a 7% annual rate and is expected to reach $110 billion in 2021. So, we are checking out the 5 best stocks for animal lovers. We go through lists like the 15 best Jim Cramer stocks to identify the next Tesla that will deliver outsized returns. 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. Now we’re going to take a gander at the recent hedge fund action encompassing Cohen & Steers, Inc. (NYSE:CNS).

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

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 17 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 13% from the previous quarter. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in CNS 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.

Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Mario Gabelli’s GAMCO Investors has the most valuable position in Cohen & Steers, Inc. (NYSE:CNS), worth close to $29.3 million, comprising 0.3% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Millennium Management, led by Israel Englander, holding a $13.4 million position; less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Remaining professional money managers that hold long positions include Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management and Renaissance Technologies. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position GAMCO Investors allocated the biggest weight to Cohen & Steers, Inc. (NYSE:CNS), around 0.26% of its 13F portfolio. Horizon Asset Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.1 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CNS.

Now, some big names have been driving this bullishness. Balyasny Asset Management, managed by Dmitry Balyasny, created the most valuable position in Cohen & Steers, Inc. (NYSE:CNS). Balyasny Asset Management had $7.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Renaissance Technologies also made a $7.4 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new CNS positions are Bruce Kovner’s Caxton Associates LP and Donald Sussman’s Paloma Partners.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Cohen & Steers, Inc. (NYSE:CNS). These stocks are Evoqua Water Technologies Corp. (NYSE:AQUA), United States Cellular Corporation (NYSE:USM), Sprouts Farmers Market Inc (NASDAQ:SFM), SSR Mining Inc. (NASDAQ:SSRM), Rent-A-Center Inc (NASDAQ:RCII), Southwestern Energy Company (NYSE:SWN), and Arcosa, Inc. (NYSE:ACA). All of these stocks’ market caps match CNS’s market cap.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 19.3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $275 million. That figure was $84 million in CNS’s case. Rent-A-Center Inc (NASDAQ:RCII) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand United States Cellular Corporation (NYSE:USM) is the least popular one with only 10 bullish hedge fund positions. Cohen & Steers, Inc. (NYSE:CNS) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CNS is 52.1. 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 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 28.5% in 2021 through July 23rd and still beat the market by 10.1 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on CNS as the stock returned 26.5% since the end of the first quarter (through 7/23) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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