Hedge Funds Checking Out Of Host Hotels and Resorts Inc (HST)

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 first 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 4.5 years and analyze what the smart money thinks of Host Hotels and Resorts Inc (NYSE:HST) based on that data.

Is Host Hotels and Resorts Inc (NYSE:HST) a buy, sell, or hold? Hedge funds are reducing their bets on the stock. The number of bullish hedge fund bets shrunk by 3 recently. Our calculations also showed that HST 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). HST was in 24 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. There were 27 hedge funds in our database with HST positions at the end of the previous quarter.

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

Today there are several metrics market participants can use to size up their stock investments. Some of the less known metrics are hedge fund and insider trading signals. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the top hedge fund managers can outpace the S&P 500 by a significant amount (see the details here).

Parag Vora of HG Vora Capital Management

We leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, we believe electric vehicles and energy storage are set to become giant markets, and we want to take advantage of the declining lithium prices amid the COVID-19 pandemic. So we are checking out investment opportunities like these. 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. With all of this in mind let’s review the recent hedge fund action surrounding Host Hotels and Resorts Inc (NYSE:HST).

How are hedge funds trading Host Hotels and Resorts Inc (NYSE:HST)?

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 24 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -11% from the fourth quarter of 2019. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in HST over the last 18 quarters. So, let’s check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

The largest stake in Host Hotels and Resorts Inc (NYSE:HST) was held by HG Vora Capital Management, which reported holding $38.6 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Two Sigma Advisors with a $21.3 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Echo Street Capital Management, Point72 Asset Management, and Yost Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Yost Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Host Hotels and Resorts Inc (NYSE:HST), around 9.65% of its 13F portfolio. Kamunting Street Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 4.24 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to HST.

Because Host Hotels and Resorts Inc (NYSE:HST) has experienced bearish sentiment from hedge fund managers, we can see that there lies a certain “tier” of money managers that elected to cut their positions entirely in the first quarter. Interestingly, Stuart J. Zimmer’s Zimmer Partners cut the biggest investment of all the hedgies watched by Insider Monkey, worth close to $60.4 million in stock. Dmitry Balyasny’s fund, Balyasny Asset Management, also dropped its stock, about $10.9 million worth. These transactions are important to note, as total hedge fund interest dropped by 3 funds in the first quarter.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Host Hotels and Resorts Inc (NYSE:HST) but similarly valued. These stocks are Mylan N.V. (NASDAQ:MYL), InterContinental Hotels Group PLC (NYSE:IHG), Brookfield Property Partners LP (NYSE:BPY), and Bilibili Inc. (NASDAQ:BILI). All of these stocks’ market caps resemble HST’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 21 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $563 million. That figure was $130 million in HST’s case. Mylan N.V. (NASDAQ:MYL) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand InterContinental Hotels Group PLC (NYSE:IHG) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. Host Hotels and Resorts Inc (NYSE:HST) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. 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 13.9% in 2020 through June 10th but beat the market by 14.2 percentage points. Unfortunately HST wasn’t nearly as popular as these 10 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on HST were disappointed as the stock returned 20.4% 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.