Hedge Funds Are Buying Horizon Bancorp (HBNC)

The financial regulations require hedge funds and wealthy investors that exceeded the $100 million holdings threshold to file a report that shows their positions at the end of every quarter. Even though it isn’t the intention, these filings to a certain extent level the playing field for ordinary investors. The latest round of 13F filings disclosed the funds’ positions on June 30th. We at Insider Monkey have made an extensive database of more than 873 of those established hedge funds and famous value investors’ filings. In this article, we analyze how these elite funds and prominent investors traded Horizon Bancorp (NASDAQ:HBNC) based on those filings.

Is Horizon Bancorp (NASDAQ:HBNC) a buy here? Hedge funds were becoming hopeful. The number of bullish hedge fund positions improved by 2 recently. Horizon Bancorp (NASDAQ:HBNC) was in 10 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistic is 14. Our calculations also showed that HBNC isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings). There were 8 hedge funds in our database with HBNC holdings at the end of March.

In the financial world there are a large number of tools investors have at their disposal to grade stocks. A pair of the most under-the-radar tools are hedge fund and insider trading indicators. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best fund managers can outperform the broader indices by a solid amount. Insider Monkey’s monthly stock picks returned 185.4% since March 2017 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 79 percentage points (see the details here). That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is a useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

Matthew Lindenbaum of Basswood Capital

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 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. 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 let’s take a look at the fresh hedge fund action regarding Horizon Bancorp (NASDAQ:HBNC).

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

At second quarter’s end, a total of 10 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 25% from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in HBNC over the last 24 quarters. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Renaissance Technologies has the number one position in Horizon Bancorp (NASDAQ:HBNC), worth close to $7.5 million, corresponding to less than 0.1%% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Two Sigma Advisors, led by John Overdeck and David Siegel, holding a $1 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other members of the smart money that hold long positions encompass D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw, Matthew Lindenbaum’s Basswood Capital and Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Minerva Advisors allocated the biggest weight to Horizon Bancorp (NASDAQ:HBNC), around 0.32% of its 13F portfolio. Basswood Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 0.03 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to HBNC.

As aggregate interest increased, specific money managers have jumped into Horizon Bancorp (NASDAQ:HBNC) headfirst. Basswood Capital, managed by Matthew Lindenbaum, established the largest position in Horizon Bancorp (NASDAQ:HBNC). Basswood Capital had $0.8 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Israel Englander’s Millennium Management also made a $0.3 million investment in the stock during the quarter.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Horizon Bancorp (NASDAQ:HBNC) but similarly valued. These stocks are Grid Dynamics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:GDYN), Atossa Genetics Inc. (NASDAQ:ATOS), Xenon Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:XENE), QCR Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCRH), Amneal Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NYSE:AMRX), Maverix Metals Inc. (NYSE:MMX), and Bristow Group, Inc. (NYSE:VTOL). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to HBNC’s market value.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 14.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $127 million. That figure was $13 million in HBNC’s case. Xenon Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:XENE) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Atossa Genetics Inc. (NASDAQ:ATOS) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. Horizon Bancorp (NASDAQ:HBNC) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for HBNC is 39.3. 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 25.7% in 2021 through September 27th and still beat the market by 6.2 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on HBNC as the stock returned 5.7% since the end of the second quarter (through 9/27) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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

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