Hedge Funds Have Never Been This Bullish On Intuitive Surgical, Inc. (ISRG)

Our extensive research has shown that imitating the smart money can generate significant returns for retail investors, which is why we track nearly 900 active prominent money managers and analyze their quarterly 13F filings. The stocks that are heavily bought by hedge funds historically outperformed the market, though there is no shortage of high profile failures like hedge funds’ 2018 losses in Facebook and Apple. Let’s take a closer look at what the funds we track think about Intuitive Surgical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ISRG) in this article.

Intuitive Surgical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ISRG) investors should pay attention to an increase in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds recently. Intuitive Surgical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ISRG) was in 53 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic was previously 51. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. There were 49 hedge funds in our database with ISRG positions at the end of the fourth quarter. Our calculations also showed that ISRG isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

Hedge funds’ reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn’t keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Hedge funds have more than $3.5 trillion in assets under management, so you can’t expect their entire portfolios to beat the market by large margins. Our research was able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 115 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). So you can still find a lot of gems by following hedge funds’ moves today.

Dmitry Balyasny of Balyasny Asset Management

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Do Hedge Funds Think ISRG Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?

At the end of March, a total of 53 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 8% from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in ISRG over the last 23 quarters. So, let’s review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

More specifically, Fisher Asset Management was the largest shareholder of Intuitive Surgical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ISRG), with a stake worth $942 million reported as of the end of March. Trailing Fisher Asset Management was Citadel Investment Group, which amassed a stake valued at $294.5 million. Millennium Management, Citadel Investment Group, and AQR Capital Management 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 Unio Capital allocated the biggest weight to Intuitive Surgical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ISRG), around 3.61% of its 13F portfolio. Sivik Global Healthcare is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 2.69 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ISRG.

As aggregate interest increased, specific money managers have jumped into Intuitive Surgical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ISRG) headfirst. Balyasny Asset Management, managed by Dmitry Balyasny, assembled the most valuable position in Intuitive Surgical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ISRG). Balyasny Asset Management had $100 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Michael Rockefeller and KarláKroeker’s Woodline Partners also made a $55.5 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new ISRG positions are Renaissance Technologies, Chen Tianqiao’s Shanda Asset Management, and Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Intuitive Surgical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ISRG) but similarly valued. These stocks are Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (NYSE:FIS), Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX), S&P Global Inc. (NYSE:SPGI), Coupang, Inc. (NYSE:CPNG), Cigna Corporation (NYSE:CI), U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB), and General Motors Company (NYSE:GM). All of these stocks’ market caps resemble ISRG’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 59.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $8317 million. That figure was $2326 million in ISRG’s case. General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Coupang, Inc. (NYSE:CPNG) is the least popular one with only 40 bullish hedge fund positions. Intuitive Surgical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ISRG) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ISRG is 53.1. 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 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 17.2% in 2021 through June 11th and still beat the market by 3.3 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on ISRG as the stock returned 17% since the end of the first quarter (through 6/11) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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

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