In this article we will take a look at whether hedge funds think Acushnet Holdings Corp. (NYSE:GOLF) is a good investment right now. We check hedge fund and billionaire investor sentiment before delving into hours of research. Hedge funds spend millions of dollars on Ivy League graduates, unconventional data sources, expert networks, and get tips from investment bankers and industry insiders. Sure they sometimes fail miserably, but their consensus stock picks historically outperformed the market after adjusting for known risk factors.
Acushnet Holdings Corp. (NYSE:GOLF) has seen an increase in hedge fund interest of late. Acushnet Holdings Corp. (NYSE:GOLF) was in 21 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistic was previously 19. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. There were 19 hedge funds in our database with GOLF holdings at the end of March. Our calculations also showed that GOLF isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).
To the average investor there are numerous indicators stock traders have at their disposal to grade stocks. A duo of the best indicators are hedge fund and insider trading sentiment. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the top fund managers can outpace their index-focused peers by a superb margin (see the details here). Also, our monthly newsletter’s portfolio of long stock picks returned 185.4% since March 2017 (through August 2021) and beat the S&P 500 Index by more than 79 percentage points. You can download a sample issue of this newsletter on our website.
Bruce Kovner of Caxton Associates LP
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. Keeping this in mind let’s take a gander at the latest hedge fund action surrounding Acushnet Holdings Corp. (NYSE:GOLF).
Do Hedge Funds Think GOLF Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At the end of the second quarter, a total of 21 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 11% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 11 hedge funds with a bullish position in GOLF a year ago. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).
The largest stake in Acushnet Holdings Corp. (NYSE:GOLF) was held by Renaissance Technologies, which reported holding $13.1 million worth of stock at the end of June. It was followed by Millennium Management with a $12.8 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Arrowstreet Capital, D E Shaw, and Citadel Investment Group. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Zebra Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Acushnet Holdings Corp. (NYSE:GOLF), around 1.14% of its 13F portfolio. Odey Asset Management Group is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.69 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to GOLF.
Consequently, key hedge funds have jumped into Acushnet Holdings Corp. (NYSE:GOLF) headfirst. GLG Partners, managed by Noam Gottesman, established the largest position in Acushnet Holdings Corp. (NYSE:GOLF). GLG Partners had $1.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Bruce Kovner’s Caxton Associates LP also made a $0.4 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new GOLF positions are Ryan Tolkin (CIO)’s Schonfeld Strategic Advisors, Qing Li’s Sciencast Management, and Joel Greenblatt’s Gotham Asset Management.
Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Acushnet Holdings Corp. (NYSE:GOLF) but similarly valued. These stocks are Cogent Communications Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:CCOI), ALLETE Inc (NYSE:ALE), Kirby Corporation (NYSE:KEX), Brookfield Business Partners L.P. (NYSE:BBU), Installed Building Products Inc (NYSE:IBP), Camping World Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CWH), and Spectrum Brands Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:SPB). This group of stocks’ market valuations resemble GOLF’s market valuation.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| CCOI | 22 | 304313 | 4 |
| ALE | 10 | 73026 | -6 |
| KEX | 21 | 583682 | -2 |
| BBU | 4 | 24531 | 1 |
| IBP | 12 | 55396 | -9 |
| CWH | 20 | 292507 | -4 |
| SPB | 35 | 578244 | -2 |
| Average | 17.7 | 273100 | -2.6 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 17.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $273 million. That figure was $68 million in GOLF’s case. Spectrum Brands Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:SPB) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Brookfield Business Partners L.P. (NYSE:BBU) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. Acushnet Holdings Corp. (NYSE:GOLF) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for GOLF is 64.4. 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. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. 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 24% in 2021 through October 22nd and beat the market again by 1.6 percentage points. Unfortunately GOLF wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on GOLF were disappointed as the stock returned 1.8% since the end of June (through 10/22) 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 many of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.
Follow Acushnet Holdings Corp. (NYSE:GOLF)
Follow Acushnet Holdings Corp. (NYSE:GOLF)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
