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 Hudson Ltd. (NYSE:HUD) based on that data and determine whether they were really smart about the stock.
Hudson Ltd. (NYSE:HUD) has experienced an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers in recent months. Hudson Ltd. (NYSE:HUD) was in 21 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. 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 HUD 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).
Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.
To the average investor there are many methods shareholders put to use to evaluate publicly traded companies. A duo of the best methods are hedge fund and insider trading interest. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the elite money managers can outclass their index-focused peers by a very impressive margin (see the details here).
Dmitry Balyasny of Balyasny Asset Management
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 junior gold mining stock. We are also checking out this lithium company which could 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. Now let’s go over the new hedge fund action surrounding Hudson Ltd. (NYSE:HUD).
What does smart money think about Hudson Ltd. (NYSE:HUD)?
At second quarter’s end, a total of 21 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 50% from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards HUD over the last 20 quarters. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Renaissance Technologies has the number one position in Hudson Ltd. (NYSE:HUD), worth close to $10 million, comprising less than 0.1%% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Newtyn Management, led by Noah Levy and Eugene Dozortsev, holding a $9.3 million position; the fund has 3.4% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish comprise David Rosen’s Rubric Capital Management, Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management and D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Newtyn Management allocated the biggest weight to Hudson Ltd. (NYSE:HUD), around 3.39% of its 13F portfolio. Rubric Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.52 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to HUD.
Now, some big names were leading the bulls’ herd. Rubric Capital Management, managed by David Rosen, established the most valuable position in Hudson Ltd. (NYSE:HUD). Rubric Capital Management had $4.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management also made a $4.1 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new HUD positions are Greg Eisner’s Engineers Gate Manager, Peter Muller’s PDT Partners, and Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital.
Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Hudson Ltd. (NYSE:HUD) but similarly valued. We will take a look at BioSpecifics Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ:BSTC), KNOT Offshore Partners LP (NYSE:KNOP), ChannelAdvisor Corp (NYSE:ECOM), Puxin Limited (NYSE:NEW), Textainer Group Holdings Limited (NYSE:TGH), Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE:PBI), and Cowen Inc. (NASDAQ:COWN). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to HUD’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| BSTC | 8 | 56791 | -1 |
| KNOP | 5 | 23419 | -1 |
| ECOM | 19 | 51172 | 8 |
| NEW | 8 | 7400 | 0 |
| TGH | 9 | 11206 | -2 |
| PBI | 11 | 35903 | -4 |
| COWN | 18 | 99103 | 0 |
| Average | 11.1 | 40713 | 0 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 11.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $41 million. That figure was $43 million in HUD’s case. ChannelAdvisor Corp (NYSE:ECOM) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand KNOT Offshore Partners LP (NYSE:KNOP) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Hudson Ltd. (NYSE:HUD) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for HUD is 90. 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 returned 24.8% in 2020 through the end of September but still managed to beat the market by 19.3 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on HUD as the stock returned 56.1% since the end of June and outperformed the market by an even larger margin. Hedge funds were clearly right about piling into this stock relative to other stocks with similar market capitalizations.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
