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 September 30th, so let’s proceed with the discussion of the hedge fund sentiment on News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA).
News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA) was in 34 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 37. NWSA has seen a decrease in hedge fund sentiment lately. There were 37 hedge funds in our database with NWSA positions at the end of the second quarter. Our calculations also showed that NWSA isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings).
Ken Griffin of Citadel Investment Group
At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium prices have more than doubled over the past year, so we go through lists like the 10 best EV 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. Keeping this in mind let’s take a look at the fresh hedge fund action encompassing News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA).
Do Hedge Funds Think NWSA Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At Q3’s end, a total of 34 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -8% from the second quarter of 2021. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards NWSA over the last 25 quarters. So, let’s examine which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
The largest stake in News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA) was held by Yacktman Asset Management, which reported holding $377.2 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Arrowstreet Capital with a $65.3 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included D E Shaw, Millennium Management, and Citadel Investment Group. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position 59 North Capital allocated the biggest weight to News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA), around 7% of its 13F portfolio. Blue Grotto Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 6.55 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to NWSA.
Seeing as News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA) has faced falling interest from the aggregate hedge fund industry, it’s easy to see that there lies a certain “tier” of money managers who were dropping their positions entirely in the third quarter. At the top of the heap, Scott Ferguson’s Sachem Head Capital sold off the largest stake of all the hedgies tracked by Insider Monkey, comprising close to $34.8 million in call options, and Alexander Mitchell’s Scopus Asset Management was right behind this move, as the fund cut about $7.7 million worth. These moves are intriguing to say the least, as aggregate hedge fund interest was cut by 3 funds in the third quarter.
Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA). These stocks are Loews Corporation (NYSE:L), Solaredge Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:SEDG), Nordson Corporation (NASDAQ:NDSN), W.P. Carey Inc. (NYSE:WPC), Lightspeed POS Inc. (NYSE:LSPD), Masco Corporation (NYSE:MAS), and News Corp (NASDAQ:NWS). This group of stocks’ market valuations are similar to NWSA’s market valuation.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| L | 27 | 175121 | -1 |
| SEDG | 33 | 594467 | -4 |
| NDSN | 29 | 310857 | -5 |
| WPC | 24 | 142763 | -5 |
| LSPD | 26 | 631903 | -3 |
| MAS | 29 | 528895 | -6 |
| NWS | 13 | 130888 | -6 |
| Average | 25.9 | 359271 | -4.3 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 25.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $359 million. That figure was $738 million in NWSA’s case. Solaredge Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:SEDG) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand News Corp (NASDAQ:NWS) is the least popular one with only 13 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for NWSA is 79.6. 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 28.6% in 2021 through November 30th and still beat the market by 5.6 percentage points. Unfortunately NWSA wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on NWSA were disappointed as the stock returned -8.1% since the end of the third quarter (through 11/30) 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 most of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
