Hedge Funds Can’t Stop Buying Janus Henderson Group plc (JHG)

Insider Monkey has processed numerous 13F filings of hedge funds and successful value investors to create an extensive database of hedge fund holdings. The 13F filings show the hedge funds’ and successful investors’ positions as of the end of the second quarter. You can find articles about an individual hedge fund’s trades on numerous financial news websites. However, in this article we will take a look at their collective moves over the last 5 years and analyze what the smart money thinks of Janus Henderson Group plc (NYSE:JHG) based on that data and determine whether they were really smart about the stock.

Is Janus Henderson Group plc (NYSE:JHG) a good investment today? Hedge funds were in an optimistic mood. The number of long hedge fund positions inched up by 7 in recent months. Janus Henderson Group plc (NYSE:JHG) was in 30 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the second quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistics is 23. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that JHG isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks). There were 23 hedge funds in our database with JHG positions at the end of the first quarter.

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

If you’d ask most shareholders, hedge funds are viewed as worthless, old financial tools of years past. While there are more than 8000 funds trading at the moment, Our experts hone in on the leaders of this club, about 850 funds. These hedge fund managers preside over the lion’s share of the smart money’s total asset base, and by monitoring their highest performing picks, Insider Monkey has come up with several investment strategies that have historically outpaced Mr. Market. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy exceeded the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points per year since its inception in March 2017. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 34% since February 2017 (through August 17th) even though the market was up 53% during the same period. We just shared a list of 8 short targets in our latest quarterly update .

Donald Sussman of Paloma Partners

At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, this “mom” trader turned $2000 into $2 million within 2 years. So, we are checking out her best trade idea of the month. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. We go through lists like the 10 most profitable companies in the world to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. Now we’re going to take a glance at the key hedge fund action regarding Janus Henderson Group plc (NYSE:JHG).

Hedge fund activity in Janus Henderson Group plc (NYSE:JHG)

At Q2’s end, a total of 30 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 30% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 15 hedge funds with a bullish position in JHG a year ago. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

Among these funds, Ariel Investments held the most valuable stake in Janus Henderson Group plc (NYSE:JHG), which was worth $43.4 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was Millennium Management which amassed $33.9 million worth of shares. Arrowstreet Capital, Fisher Asset Management, and Citadel Investment Group 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 Azora Capital allocated the biggest weight to Janus Henderson Group plc (NYSE:JHG), around 0.79% of its 13F portfolio. Ariel Investments is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.66 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to JHG.

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, specific money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Azora Capital, managed by Ravi Chopra, created the most valuable position in Janus Henderson Group plc (NYSE:JHG). Azora Capital had $4.8 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital also initiated a $4.2 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new JHG positions are Donald Sussman’s Paloma Partners, Ryan Tolkin (CIO)’s Schonfeld Strategic Advisors, and Benjamin A. Smith’s Laurion Capital Management.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Janus Henderson Group plc (NYSE:JHG) but similarly valued. These stocks are Equity Commonwealth (NYSE:EQC), ICL Group Ltd. (NYSE:ICL), Graphic Packaging Holding Company (NYSE:GPK), ChemoCentryx Inc (NASDAQ:CCXI), Amicus Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:FOLD), Highwoods Properties Inc (NYSE:HIW), and QTS Realty Trust Inc (NYSE:QTS). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to JHG’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 26 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $453 million. That figure was $216 million in JHG’s case. Graphic Packaging Holding Company (NYSE:GPK) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand ICL Group Ltd. (NYSE:ICL) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. Janus Henderson Group plc (NYSE:JHG) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for JHG is 86.3. 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 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 23.8% in 2020 through September 14th and beat the market by 17.6 percentage points. Unfortunately JHG wasn’t nearly as popular as these 10 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on JHG were disappointed as the stock returned -7.6% during the same time period 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 many of these stocks already outperformed the market so far this year.

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