Hedge Funds Are Crazy About The Buckle, Inc. (BKE)

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 March 31st, so let’s proceed with the discussion of the hedge fund sentiment on The Buckle, Inc. (NYSE:BKE).

Is The Buckle, Inc. (NYSE:BKE) worth your attention right now? Prominent investors were taking a bullish view. The number of bullish hedge fund positions inched up by 10 recently. The Buckle, Inc. (NYSE:BKE) was in 22 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic was previously 21. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that BKE isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

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 206.8% since March 2017 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 115 percentage points (see the details here). That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is a useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

Eric Sprott of Sprott Asset Management

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Chuck Schumer recently stated that marijuana legalization will be a Senate priority. So, we are checking out this under the radar stock that will benefit from this. 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. With all of this in mind let’s analyze the key hedge fund action encompassing The Buckle, Inc. (NYSE:BKE).

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

At the end of March, a total of 22 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 83% from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards BKE over the last 23 quarters. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an “upper tier” of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were adding to their holdings meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in The Buckle, Inc. (NYSE:BKE) was held by Renaissance Technologies, which reported holding $16 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Sprott Asset Management with a $12.2 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Intrinsic Edge Capital, D E Shaw, and Balyasny Asset Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Intrinsic Edge Capital allocated the biggest weight to The Buckle, Inc. (NYSE:BKE), around 0.76% of its 13F portfolio. Sprott Asset Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.73 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to BKE.

Now, some big names have been driving this bullishness. Point72 Asset Management, managed by Steve Cohen, created the largest position in The Buckle, Inc. (NYSE:BKE). Point72 Asset Management had $2.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw also initiated a $0.9 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new BKE positions are Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital, Donald Sussman’s Paloma Partners, and Mika Toikka’s AlphaCrest Capital Management.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as The Buckle, Inc. (NYSE:BKE) but similarly valued. These stocks are Perficient, Inc. (NASDAQ:PRFT), Knowles Corp (NYSE:KN), Equinox Gold Corp. (NYSE:EQX), Hostess Brands, Inc. (NASDAQ:TWNK), Sumo Logic, Inc. (NASDAQ:SUMO), The Macerich Company (NYSE:MAC), and Enviva Partners, LP (NYSE:EVA). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to BKE’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 18.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $193 million. That figure was $78 million in BKE’s case. Hostess Brands, Inc. (NASDAQ:TWNK) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Enviva Partners, LP (NYSE:EVA) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. The Buckle, Inc. (NYSE:BKE) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for BKE is 67.8. 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 23.8% in 2021 through July 16th and still beat the market by 7.7 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on BKE, though not to the same extent, as the stock returned 10% since Q1 (through July 16th) and outperformed the market as well.

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

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