Do Hedge Funds Love Ameriprise Financial, Inc. (AMP)?

A whopping number of 13F filings filed with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has been processed by Insider Monkey so that individual investors can look at the overall hedge fund sentiment towards the stocks included in their watchlists. These freshly-submitted public filings disclose money managers’ equity positions as of the end of the three-month period that ended March 31st, so let’s proceed with the discussion of the hedge fund sentiment on Ameriprise Financial, Inc. (NYSE:AMP).

Ameriprise Financial, Inc. (NYSE:AMP) has seen an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers in recent months. Ameriprise Financial, Inc. (NYSE:AMP) was in 37 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic is 39. There were 34 hedge funds in our database with AMP positions at the end of the fourth quarter. Our calculations also showed that AMP isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

If you’d ask most traders, hedge funds are perceived as slow, outdated investment vehicles of the past. While there are greater than 8000 funds with their doors open at the moment, We look at the bigwigs of this group, around 850 funds. These hedge fund managers preside over the majority of all hedge funds’ total asset base, and by paying attention to their finest picks, Insider Monkey has spotted several investment strategies that have historically surpassed the S&P 500 index. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy defeated the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points per annum since its inception in March 2017. 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 .

Ole Andreas Halvorsen of Viking Global

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium mining is one of the fastest growing industries right now, so we are checking out stock pitches like this emerging lithium stock. 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. With all of this in mind we’re going to take a look at the key hedge fund action surrounding Ameriprise Financial, Inc. (NYSE:AMP).

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

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 37 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 9% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 26 hedge funds with a bullish position in AMP a year ago. So, let’s see 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, Andrew Wellington and Jeff Keswin’s Lyrical Asset Management has the most valuable position in Ameriprise Financial, Inc. (NYSE:AMP), worth close to $442.6 million, amounting to 5.2% of its total 13F portfolio. On Lyrical Asset Management’s heels is Andreas Halvorsen of Viking Global, with a $197.1 million position; 0.6% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Other peers that hold long positions encompass Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management, Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management and Israel Englander’s Millennium Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Lyrical Asset Management allocated the biggest weight to Ameriprise Financial, Inc. (NYSE:AMP), around 5.2% of its 13F portfolio. L2 Asset Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 2.03 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to AMP.

Consequently, some big names were breaking ground themselves. Viking Global, managed by Andreas Halvorsen, established the biggest position in Ameriprise Financial, Inc. (NYSE:AMP). Viking Global had $197.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management also initiated a $54.5 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Daniel Johnson’s Gillson Capital, Benjamin A. Smith’s Laurion Capital Management, and Anand Parekh’s Alyeska Investment Group.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Ameriprise Financial, Inc. (NYSE:AMP) but similarly valued. These stocks are Tyson Foods, Inc. (NYSE:TSN), RingCentral Inc (NYSE:RNG), Mettler-Toledo International Inc. (NYSE:MTD), Ferguson plc (NYSE:FERG), Dollar Tree, Inc. (NASDAQ:DLTR), Equity Residential (NYSE:EQR), and Keysight Technologies Inc (NYSE:KEYS). This group of stocks’ market values match AMP’s market value.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 29.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1324 million. That figure was $970 million in AMP’s case. RingCentral Inc (NYSE:RNG) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Ferguson plc (NYSE:FERG) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. Ameriprise Financial, Inc. (NYSE:AMP) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for AMP is 71.2. 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 positive signal but 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 beat the market again by 4.8 percentage points. Unfortunately AMP wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on AMP were disappointed as the stock returned 7.4% 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 many of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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