Before we spend days researching a stock idea we’d like to take a look at how hedge funds and billionaire investors recently traded that stock. S&P 500 Index returned about 7.6% during the last 12 months ending November 21, 2016. Most investors don’t notice that less than 49% of the stocks in the index outperformed the index. This means you (or a monkey throwing a dart) have less than an even chance of beating the market by randomly picking a stock. On the other hand, the top 30 mid-cap stocks among the best performing hedge funds had an average return of 18% during the same period. Hedge funds had bad stock picks like everyone else. We are sure you have read about their worst picks, like Valeant, in the media over the past year. So, taking cues from hedge funds isn’t a foolproof strategy, but it seems to work on average. In this article, we will take a look at what hedge funds think about Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:SPR).
Is Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:SPR) a bargain? Prominent investors are reducing their bets on the stock. The number of bullish hedge fund positions were trimmed by 4 in recent months. SPR was in 30 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. There were 34 hedge funds in our database with SPR positions at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare SPR to other stocks including Arrow Electronics, Inc. (NYSE:ARW), Seattle Genetics, Inc. (NASDAQ:SGEN), and Genpact Limited (NYSE:G) to get a better sense of its popularity.
Follow Spirit Aerosystems Holdings Inc. (NYSE:SPR)
Follow Spirit Aerosystems Holdings Inc. (NYSE:SPR)
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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Keeping this in mind, we’re going to view the key action regarding Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:SPR).
What have hedge funds been doing with Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:SPR)?
Heading into the fourth quarter of 2016, a total of 30 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a drop of 12% from the second quarter of 2016. With hedge funds’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).
Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Scopia Capital, managed by Matt Sirovich and Jeremy Mindich, holds the biggest position in Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:SPR). According to regulatory filings, the fund has a $564.6 million position in the stock, comprising 10% of its 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Hound Partners, led by Jonathan Auerbach, holding a $476.5 million position; the fund has 12.8% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other members of the smart money with similar optimism contain Anand Desai’s Darsana Capital Partners, D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw and Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management.
