The 800+ hedge funds and famous money managers tracked by Insider Monkey have already compiled and submitted their 13F filings for the first quarter, which unveil their equity positions as of March 31st. We went through these filings, fixed typos and other more significant errors and identified the changes in hedge fund portfolios. Our extensive review of these public filings is finally over, so this article is set to reveal the smart money sentiment towards U.S. Well Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:USWS).
U.S. Well Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:USWS) was in 5 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic is 15. USWS shareholders have witnessed a decrease in hedge fund interest recently. There were 7 hedge funds in our database with USWS holdings at the end of December. Our calculations also showed that USWS isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).
Hedge funds’ reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn’t keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Hedge funds have more than $3.5 trillion in assets under management, so you can’t expect their entire portfolios to beat the market by large margins. Our research was able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 115 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). So you can still find a lot of gems by following hedge funds’ moves today.
Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital Management
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. Now we’re going to take a glance at the fresh hedge fund action encompassing U.S. Well Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:USWS).
Do Hedge Funds Think USWS Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At Q1’s end, a total of 5 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -29% from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards USWS over the last 23 quarters. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).
When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Renaissance Technologies has the largest position in U.S. Well Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:USWS), worth close to $1.5 million, amounting to less than 0.1%% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is CaaS Capital, led by Frank Fu, holding a $1.3 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining members of the smart money that hold long positions consist of John M. Angelo and Michael L. Gordon’s Angelo Gordon & Co, and Curtis Schenker and Craig Effron’s Scoggin. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Angelo Gordon & Co allocated the biggest weight to U.S. Well Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:USWS), around 0.07% of its 13F portfolio. Scoggin is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.03 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to USWS.
Judging by the fact that U.S. Well Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:USWS) has faced declining sentiment from the smart money, it’s safe to say that there is a sect of funds that decided to sell off their entire stakes in the first quarter. At the top of the heap, Donald Sussman’s Paloma Partners said goodbye to the biggest stake of the 750 funds followed by Insider Monkey, worth close to $0.2 million in stock, and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group was right behind this move, as the fund said goodbye to about $0.1 million worth. These transactions are intriguing to say the least, as aggregate hedge fund interest was cut by 2 funds in the first quarter.
Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as U.S. Well Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:USWS) but similarly valued. These stocks are Support.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPRT), Perma-Fix Environmental Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:PESI), Global Internet of People, Inc. (NASDAQ:SDH), Elys Game Technology, Corp. (NASDAQ:ELYS), Excellon Resources Inc. (NYSE:EXN), Synthetic Biologics Inc (NYSE:SYN), and Advaxis, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADXS). This group of stocks’ market valuations match USWS’s market valuation.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| SPRT | 4 | 4595 | 0 |
| PESI | 2 | 2623 | 0 |
| SDH | 1 | 83 | 1 |
| ELYS | 2 | 266 | -1 |
| EXN | 1 | 79 | 0 |
| SYN | 3 | 1110 | 1 |
| ADXS | 2 | 2220 | 0 |
| Average | 2.1 | 1568 | 0.1 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 2.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $2 million. That figure was $4 million in USWS’s case. Support.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPRT) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Global Internet of People, Inc. (NASDAQ:SDH) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks U.S. Well Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:USWS) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for USWS is 63. 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 17.4% in 2021 through June 18th and still beat the market by 6.1 percentage points. Unfortunately USWS wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on USWS were disappointed as the stock returned -16.3% since the end of the first quarter (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 since 2019.
Follow U.s. Well Services Holdings Llc (NASDAQ:USWS)
Follow U.s. Well Services Holdings Llc (NASDAQ:USWS)
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
