Hedge Funds Aren’t Done Buying Camden Property Trust (CPT)

The financial regulations require hedge funds and wealthy investors that exceeded the $100 million equity holdings threshold to file a report that shows their positions at the end of every quarter. Even though it isn’t the intention, these filings to a certain extent level the playing field for ordinary investors. The latest round of 13F filings disclosed the funds’ positions on March 31st, about a week after the S&P 500 Index bottomed. We at Insider Monkey have made an extensive database of more than 821 of those established hedge funds and famous value investors’ filings. In this article, we analyze how these elite funds and prominent investors traded Camden Property Trust (NYSE:CPT) based on those filings.

Is Camden Property Trust (NYSE:CPT) the right investment to pursue these days? The best stock pickers are in a bullish mood. The number of bullish hedge fund bets increased by 1 lately. Our calculations also showed that CPT isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks).

Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

To the average investor there are a multitude of gauges shareholders employ to evaluate stocks. A pair of the less known gauges are hedge fund and insider trading signals. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the best hedge fund managers can outpace the market by a significant amount (see the details here).

Charles Davidson of Wexford Capital

At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, 2020’s unprecedented market conditions provide us with the highest number of trading opportunities in a decade. So we are checking out trades like this one. We interview hedge fund managers and ask them about their best ideas. If you want to find out the best healthcare stock to buy right now, you can watch our latest hedge fund manager interview here. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. Our best call in 2020 was shorting the market when the S&P 500 was trading at 3150 after realizing the coronavirus pandemic’s significance before most investors. Keeping this in mind let’s take a peek at the key hedge fund action encompassing Camden Property Trust (NYSE:CPT).

How have hedgies been trading Camden Property Trust (NYSE:CPT)?

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 32 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 3% from the fourth quarter of 2019. By comparison, 24 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in CPT a year ago. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

More specifically, Millennium Management was the largest shareholder of Camden Property Trust (NYSE:CPT), with a stake worth $62 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Millennium Management was Citadel Investment Group, which amassed a stake valued at $44.8 million. V3 Capital, D E Shaw, and Waterfront Capital Partners were also very fond of the stock, becoming one of the largest hedge fund holders of the company. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Land & Buildings Investment Management allocated the biggest weight to Camden Property Trust (NYSE:CPT), around 8.48% of its 13F portfolio. V3 Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 8.1 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CPT.

As industrywide interest jumped, some big names have been driving this bullishness. V3 Capital, managed by Charles Fitzgerald, initiated the most valuable position in Camden Property Trust (NYSE:CPT). V3 Capital had $37 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Jonathan Litt’s Land & Buildings Investment Management also initiated a $21 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are John Khoury’s Long Pond Capital, Greg Poole’s Echo Street Capital Management, and Charles Davidson and Joseph Jacobs’s Wexford Capital.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Camden Property Trust (NYSE:CPT) but similarly valued. These stocks are Expedia Group Inc (NASDAQ:EXPE), Crown Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCK), Zscaler, Inc. (NASDAQ:ZS), and Everest Re Group Ltd (NYSE:RE). All of these stocks’ market caps resemble CPT’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 37.75 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $900 million. That figure was $362 million in CPT’s case. Crown Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCK) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Zscaler, Inc. (NASDAQ:ZS) is the least popular one with only 27 bullish hedge fund positions. Camden Property Trust (NYSE:CPT) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. 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 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.4% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10.1 percentage points. These stocks gained 8.3% in 2020 through the end of May and surpassed the market by 13.2 percentage points. Unfortunately CPT wasn’t nearly as popular as these 10 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); CPT investors were disappointed as the stock returned 15.6% during the second quarter and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market in 2020.

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