Insider Monkey finished processing more than 700 13F filings made by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of September 30th. In this article we are going to take a look at smart money sentiment towards Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp (NASDAQ:CTSH).
Is Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp (NASDAQ:CTSH) going to take off soon? Our calculations show that investors who are in the know are taking a neutral to bearish view. The number of long hedge fund positions stayed the same which is a slightly negative development in our experience.
Let’s quickly go over the new action regarding Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp (NASDAQ:CTSH) to find out who is buying the stock and how the hedge fund interest in the stock compare to its peers.
What have hedge funds been doing with Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp (NASDAQ:CTSH)?
At the end of the third quarter, a total of 49 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long in this stock, a change of 0% from one quarter earlier. With hedgies’ capital changing hands, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes substantially.
According to hedge fund intelligence website Insider Monkey, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group had the most valuable position in Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp (NASDAQ:CTSH), worth close to $292.5 million, corresponding to 0.3% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Alyeska Investment Group, led by Anand Parekh, holding a $100.2 million position; 1.3% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Other hedge funds that are bullish contain Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management and Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson’s Adage Capital Management.
Due to the fact that Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp (NASDAQ:CTSH) has faced slightly bearish sentiment from the smart money, we can see that there is a sect of hedgies that decided to sell off their entire stakes heading into Q4. At the top of the heap, Christopher Medlock James’s Partner Fund Management dumped the biggest stake of the 700 funds watched by Insider Monkey, totaling an estimated $49.8 million in stock. Columbus Circle Investors also cut its stock, about $40.9 million worth.
Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp (NASDAQ:CTSH). These stocks are Aetna Inc. (NYSE:AET), ASML Holding N.V. (ADR) (NASDAQ:ASML), Paypal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:PYPL), and Charles Schwab Corp (NYSE:SCHW). This group of stocks’ market values are closest to CTSH’s market value.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| AET | 70 | 4587946 | -10 |
| ASML | 9 | 138344 | -4 |
| PYPL | 87 | 4942535 | 87 |
| SCHW | 48 | 3101940 | 2 |
As you can see these stocks had an average of 53.5 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks were 3193 million dollars. Cognizant had 49 hedge funds with a total investment of $1.7 billion at the end of September. So, overall, a smaller number of hedge funds invested smaller amounts in Cognizant. We usually look for large deviations in hedge fund interest to consider a stock as a buy/sell candidate and spend more time on researching it. The only intriguing bit of information we see regarding CTSH is Ken Griffin’s huge position which was boosted by 90% during the third quarter.
