Hedge Funds Have Never Been This Bullish On Camping World Holdings, Inc. (CWH)

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. We at Insider Monkey have plowed through 823 13F filings that hedge funds and well-known value investors are required to file by the SEC. The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of June 30th, when the S&P 500 Index was trading around the 3100 level. Stocks kept going up since then. In this article we look at how hedge funds traded Camping World Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CWH) and determine whether the smart money was really smart about this stock.

Is Camping World Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CWH) a buy, sell, or hold? The smart money was betting on the stock. The number of bullish hedge fund bets rose by 7 lately. Camping World Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CWH) was in 23 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the second quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistics is 20. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that CWH 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 16 hedge funds in our database with CWH holdings at the end of March.

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

To most traders, hedge funds are viewed as worthless, outdated financial tools of years past. While there are over 8000 funds with their doors open today, Our researchers choose to focus on the aristocrats of this club, about 850 funds. It is estimated that this group of investors have their hands on bulk of the hedge fund industry’s total capital, and by keeping an eye on their matchless picks, Insider Monkey has formulated numerous investment strategies that have historically exceeded the S&P 500 index. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy outpaced 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 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 .

Brad Farber of Atika Capital

At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost precious metals prices. So, we are checking out this lithium company which could also benefit from the electric car adoption. 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. 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 website to get excerpts of these letters in your inbox. With all of this in mind let’s take a look at the fresh hedge fund action regarding Camping World Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CWH).

What have hedge funds been doing with Camping World Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CWH)?

At Q2’s end, a total of 23 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 44% from the previous quarter. By comparison, 9 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in CWH a year ago. 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 Camping World Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CWH) was held by Abrams Capital Management, which reported holding $165.9 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by D E Shaw with a $44.7 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Renaissance Technologies, Arrowstreet Capital, and Royce & Associates. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Abrams Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Camping World Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CWH), around 5.36% of its 13F portfolio. Newtyn Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 1.34 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CWH.

Now, key money managers were breaking ground themselves. Renaissance Technologies, assembled the biggest position in Camping World Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CWH). Renaissance Technologies had $25.8 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Richard Driehaus’s Driehaus Capital also initiated a $14 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new CWH positions are Brad Farber’s Atika Capital, Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management, and Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Camping World Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CWH) but similarly valued. These stocks are Federated Hermes, Inc. (NYSE:FHI), Evercore Inc. (NYSE:EVR), Arco Platform Limited (NASDAQ:ARCE), ViaSat, Inc. (NASDAQ:VSAT), Kennametal Inc. (NYSE:KMT), SailPoint Technologies Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:SAIL), and Fiverr International Ltd. (NYSE:FVRR). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to CWH’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 22.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $344 million. That figure was $342 million in CWH’s case. Federated Hermes, Inc. (NYSE:FHI) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Kennametal Inc. (NYSE:KMT) is the least popular one with only 10 bullish hedge fund positions. Camping World Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CWH) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CWH is 72.5. 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 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 24.8% in 2020 through the end of September and still beat the market by 19.3 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on CWH, though not to the same extent, as the stock returned 10.1% in Q3 and outperformed the market as well.

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