Hedge Funds Have Never Been This Bullish On BGC Partners, Inc. (BGCP)

We at Insider Monkey have gone over 821 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, near the height of the coronavirus market crash. In this article, we look at what those funds think of BGC Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ:BGCP) based on that data.

BGC Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ:BGCP) was in 31 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. BGCP has seen an increase in hedge fund interest recently. There were 27 hedge funds in our database with BGCP positions at the end of the previous quarter. Our calculations also showed that BGCP 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.

In the eyes of most stock holders, hedge funds are seen as underperforming, outdated financial vehicles of the past. While there are greater than 8000 funds trading today, Our experts choose to focus on the elite of this club, approximately 850 funds. These investment experts preside over bulk of all hedge funds’ total asset base, and by paying attention to their best investments, Insider Monkey has discovered a few investment strategies that have historically exceeded the broader indices. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy defeated the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points a year since its inception in March 2017. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 36% since February 2017 (through May 18th) even though the market was up 30% during the same period. We just shared a list of 8 short targets in our latest quarterly update .

Paul Marshall of Marshall Wace

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 we’re going to take a gander at the key hedge fund action regarding BGC Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ:BGCP).

Hedge fund activity in BGC Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ:BGCP)

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 31 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 15% from the fourth quarter of 2019. On the other hand, there were a total of 26 hedge funds with a bullish position in BGCP a year ago. So, let’s find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Amy Minella’s Cardinal Capital has the largest position in BGC Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ:BGCP), worth close to $38.5 million, comprising 1.9% of its total 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Point72 Asset Management, managed by Steve Cohen, which holds a $37.2 million position; the fund has 0.3% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish include David Rosen’s Rubric Capital Management, Anand Parekh’s Alyeska Investment Group and Murray Stahl’s Horizon Asset Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Cruiser Capital Advisors allocated the biggest weight to BGC Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ:BGCP), around 3.66% of its 13F portfolio. Rubric Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 2.3 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to BGCP.

Now, key hedge funds were leading the bulls’ herd. LMR Partners, managed by Ben Levine, Andrew Manuel and Stefan Renold, assembled the largest position in BGC Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ:BGCP). LMR Partners had $1.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw also made a $0.6 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new BGCP positions are Greg Eisner’s Engineers Gate Manager, Clint Carlson’s Carlson Capital, and Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to BGC Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ:BGCP). We will take a look at Beam Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:BEAM), Opko Health Inc. (NYSE:OPK), NanoString Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:NSTG), and Skyline Champion Corporation (NYSE:SKY). This group of stocks’ market values match BGCP’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 16.25 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $107 million. That figure was $143 million in BGCP’s case. Skyline Champion Corporation (NYSE:SKY) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Beam Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:BEAM) is the least popular one with only 11 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks BGC Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ:BGCP) is more popular among hedge funds. 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 still beat the market by 13.2 percentage points. Unfortunately BGCP wasn’t nearly as popular as these 10 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on BGCP were disappointed as the stock returned 2.8% during the second quarter (through the end of May) 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.