Hedge Funds Are Selling Tsakos Energy Navigation Ltd. (TNP)

We at Insider Monkey have gone over 866 13F filings that hedge funds and prominent investors are required to file by the SEC. The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of March 31st. In this article, we look at what those funds think of Tsakos Energy Navigation Ltd. (NYSE:TNP) based on that data.

Tsakos Energy Navigation Ltd. (NYSE:TNP) was in 5 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 19. TNP investors should be aware of a decrease in support from the world’s most elite money managers recently. There were 6 hedge funds in our database with TNP positions at the end of the fourth quarter. Our calculations also showed that TNP 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.

David Iben of Kopernik Global Investors

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, an activist hedge fund owns nearly 40% of this $23 biotech stock and is trying to buy the rest for around $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 we’re going to review the fresh hedge fund action regarding Tsakos Energy Navigation Ltd. (NYSE:TNP).

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

At first quarter’s end, a total of 5 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -17% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 13 hedge funds with a bullish position in TNP a year ago. With hedgies’ capital changing hands, 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 Tsakos Energy Navigation Ltd. (NYSE:TNP) was held by Kopernik Global Investors, which reported holding $11 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Renaissance Technologies with a $2.9 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Arrowstreet Capital, Citadel Investment Group, and Citadel Investment Group. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Kopernik Global Investors allocated the biggest weight to Tsakos Energy Navigation Ltd. (NYSE:TNP), around 1.24% of its 13F portfolio. Engineers Gate Manager is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.01 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to TNP.

We view hedge fund activity in the stock unfavorable, but in this case there was only a single hedge fund selling its entire position: Millennium Management. One hedge fund selling its entire position doesn’t always imply a bearish intent. Theoretically a hedge fund may decide to sell a promising position in order to invest the proceeds in a more promising idea. However, we don’t think this is the case in this case because only one of the 800+ hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey identified as a viable investment and initiated a position in the stock (that fund was Citadel Investment Group).

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Tsakos Energy Navigation Ltd. (NYSE:TNP) but similarly valued. We will take a look at SPI Energy Co., Ltd. (NASDAQ:SPI), Overseas Shipholding Group, Inc. (NYSE:OSG), Movano Inc. (NASDAQ:MOVE), Medallion Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:MFIN), Battalion Oil Corporation (NYSE:BATL), OncoSec Medical Incorporated (NASDAQ:ONCS), and Voyager Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:VYGR). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to TNP’s market cap.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $28 million. That figure was $15 million in TNP’s case. Overseas Shipholding Group, Inc. (NYSE:OSG) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Movano Inc. (NASDAQ:MOVE) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Tsakos Energy Navigation Ltd. (NYSE:TNP) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for TNP is 34.1. 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 negative signal and 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 17.4% in 2021 through June 18th and surpassed the market again by 6.1 percentage points. Unfortunately TNP wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); TNP investors were disappointed as the stock returned -13.5% since the end of March (through 6/18) 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 in 2021.

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