Do Hedge Funds Love Vasta Platform Limited (VSTA)?

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 Vasta Platform Limited (NASDAQ:VSTA) for your portfolio? We’ll look to this invaluable collective wisdom for the answer.

Vasta Platform Limited (NASDAQ:VSTA) investors should be aware of a decrease in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds of late. Vasta Platform Limited (NASDAQ:VSTA) was in 4 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic is 8. Our calculations also showed that VSTA isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

Why do we pay any attention at all to hedge fund sentiment? Our research has shown that a select group of hedge fund holdings outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by 115 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is an extremely useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

Israel Englander of Millennium Management

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, an activist hedge fund wants to buy this $28 biotech stock for $50. So, we recommended a long position to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. 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. Keeping this in mind let’s review the recent hedge fund action regarding Vasta Platform Limited (NASDAQ:VSTA).

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

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 4 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -50% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards VSTA 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.

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, SCGE Management, managed by Christopher Lyle, holds the number one position in Vasta Platform Limited (NASDAQ:VSTA). SCGE Management has a $9.9 million position in the stock, comprising 0.1% of its 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Alyeska Investment Group, led by Anand Parekh, holding a $3.4 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other peers that are bullish comprise Israel Englander’s Millennium Management, Benjamin A. Smith’s Laurion Capital Management and . In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position SCGE Management allocated the biggest weight to Vasta Platform Limited (NASDAQ:VSTA), around 0.11% of its 13F portfolio. Alyeska Investment Group is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.05 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to VSTA.

Seeing as Vasta Platform Limited (NASDAQ:VSTA) has witnessed falling interest from hedge fund managers, we can see that there exists a select few funds who sold off their full holdings by the end of the first quarter. Interestingly, Jonathan Auerbach’s Hound Partners dumped the largest position of all the hedgies followed by Insider Monkey, totaling about $3.6 million in stock, and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group was right behind this move, as the fund cut about $0.3 million worth. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest was cut by 4 funds by the end of the first quarter.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Vasta Platform Limited (NASDAQ:VSTA). These stocks are Rekor Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:REKR), Celldex Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:CLDX), Horizon Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:HBNC), Energy Fuels Inc (NYSE:UUUU), Photronics, Inc. (NASDAQ:PLAB), UMH Properties, Inc (NYSE:UMH), and Forrester Research, Inc. (NASDAQ:FORR). This group of stocks’ market valuations resemble VSTA’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 12.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $89 million. That figure was $15 million in VSTA’s case. Celldex Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:CLDX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand UMH Properties, Inc (NYSE:UMH) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Vasta Platform Limited (NASDAQ:VSTA) is even less popular than UMH. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for VSTA is 16. 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. Hedge funds dodged a bullet by taking a bearish stance towards VSTA. Our calculations showed that the top 10 most popular hedge fund stocks returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 17.2% in 2021 through June 11th but managed to beat the market again by 3.3 percentage points. Unfortunately VSTA wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was very bearish); VSTA investors were disappointed as the stock returned -10.1% since the end of the first quarter (through 6/11) 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.

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