It is already common knowledge that individual investors do not usually have the necessary resources and abilities to properly research an investment opportunity. As a result, most investors pick their illusory “winners” by making a superficial analysis and research that leads to poor performance on aggregate. The Standard and Poor’s 500 Index returned 7.6% over the 12-month period ending November 21, while more than 51% of the constituents of the index underperformed the benchmark. Hence, a random stock picking process will most likely lead to disappointment. At the same time, the 30 most favored mid-cap stocks by the best performing hedge funds monitored by Insider Monkey generated a return of 18% over the same time span. Of course, hedge funds do make wrong bets on some occasions and these get disproportionately publicized on financial media, but piggybacking their moves can beat the broader market on average. That’s why we are going to go over recent hedge fund activity in Monster Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE:MWW).
Is Monster Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE:MWW) a buy right now? Prominent investors are really taking an optimistic view. The number of bullish hedge fund positions that are disclosed in regulatory 13F filings experienced an increase of 1 lately. MWWwas in 20 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. There were 19 hedge funds in our database with MWW positions at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare MWW to other stocks including Nova Measuring Instruments Ltd. (NASDAQ:NVMI), Voyager Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:VYGR), and BioSpecifics Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ:BSTC) to get a better sense of its popularity.
Follow Monster Worldwide Inc. (NYSE:MWW)
Follow Monster Worldwide Inc. (NYSE:MWW)
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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Now, let’s take a gander at the latest action surrounding Monster Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE:MWW).
How have hedgies been trading Monster Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE:MWW)?
Heading into the fourth quarter of 2016, a total of 20 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 5% from the second quarter of 2016. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards MWW over the last 5 quarters. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).
Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, D E Shaw, led by D. E. Shaw, holds the largest position in Monster Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE:MWW). D E Shaw has a $11.2 million position in the stock, comprising less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Jericho Capital Asset Management, led by Josh Resnick, holding a $9.8 million position; 0.4% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Some other professional money managers that hold long positions contain Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies, John Paulson’s Paulson & Co and Robert Emil Zoellner’s Alpine Associates. We should note that none of these hedge funds are among our list of the 100 best performing hedge funds which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-microcap stocks.
Now, specific money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Jericho Capital Asset Management, led by Josh Resnick, assembled the most valuable position in Monster Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE:MWW). Jericho Capital Asset Management had $9.8 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. John Paulson’s Paulson & Co also made a $7.2 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new MWW investors: Robert Emil Zoellner’s Alpine Associates, Stephen Loukas, David A. Lorber, Zachary George’s FrontFour Capital Group, and Mario Gabelli’s GAMCO Investors.
Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Monster Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE:MWW). We will take a look at Nova Measuring Instruments Ltd. (NASDAQ:NVMI), Voyager Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:VYGR), BioSpecifics Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ:BSTC), and Compugen Ltd. (USA) (NASDAQ:CGEN). This group of stocks’ market caps match MWW’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| NVMI | 5 | 30424 | -1 |
| VYGR | 6 | 43742 | -1 |
| BSTC | 6 | 22305 | 0 |
| CGEN | 5 | 29603 | -1 |
As you can see these stocks had an average of 5.5 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $32 million. That figure was $50 million in MWW’s case. Voyager Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:VYGR) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Nova Measuring Instruments Ltd. (NASDAQ:NVMI) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Monster Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE:MWW) is more popular among hedge funds. Considering that hedge funds are fond of this stock in relation to its market cap peers, it may be a good idea to analyze it in detail and potentially include it in your portfolio.
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