Is Kirkland Lake Gold Ltd. (NYSE:KL) a good place to invest some of your money right now? We can gain invaluable insight to help us answer that question by studying the investment trends of top investors, who employ world-class Ivy League graduates, who are given immense resources and industry contacts to put their financial expertise to work. The top picks of these firms have historically outperformed the market when we account for known risk factors, making them very valuable investment ideas.
Is Kirkland Lake Gold Ltd. (NYSE:KL) an attractive stock to buy now? Prominent investors are getting more bullish. The number of long hedge fund positions rose by 2 in recent months. Our calculations also showed that kl isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds. KL was in 25 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2019. There were 23 hedge funds in our database with KL positions at the end of the previous quarter.
Today there are tons of gauges shareholders have at their disposal to appraise publicly traded companies. A couple of the less utilized gauges are hedge fund and insider trading sentiment. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best investment managers can outclass the broader indices by a solid margin (see the details here).
Noam Gottesman, GLG Partners
We’re going to review the latest hedge fund action surrounding Kirkland Lake Gold Ltd. (NYSE:KL).
How have hedgies been trading Kirkland Lake Gold Ltd. (NYSE:KL)?
Heading into the second quarter of 2019, a total of 25 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 9% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 15 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in KL a year ago. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).
Among these funds, Polar Capital held the most valuable stake in Kirkland Lake Gold Ltd. (NYSE:KL), which was worth $67.3 million at the end of the first quarter. On the second spot was Renaissance Technologies which amassed $42.4 million worth of shares. Moreover, D E Shaw, GLG Partners, and Two Sigma Advisors were also bullish on Kirkland Lake Gold Ltd. (NYSE:KL), allocating a large percentage of their portfolios to this stock.
With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, key money managers have been driving this bullishness. Waratah Capital Advisors, managed by Brad Dunkley and Blair Levinsky, initiated the most outsized position in Kirkland Lake Gold Ltd. (NYSE:KL). Waratah Capital Advisors had $20.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Ben Levine, Andrew Manuel and Stefan Renold’s LMR Partners also initiated a $2.3 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new KL positions are Michael Platt and William Reeves’s BlueCrest Capital Mgmt. and Minhua Zhang’s Weld Capital Management.
Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Kirkland Lake Gold Ltd. (NYSE:KL). These stocks are ServiceMaster Global Holdings Inc (NYSE:SERV), Tilray, Inc. (NASDAQ:TLRY), Old Republic International Corporation (NYSE:ORI), and Integrated Device Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:IDTI). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to KL’s market value.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| SERV | 24 | 522396 | -3 |
| TLRY | 10 | 22079 | 2 |
| ORI | 19 | 432254 | -4 |
| IDTI | 29 | 1393513 | -6 |
| Average | 20.5 | 592561 | -2.75 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 20.5 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $593 million. That figure was $323 million in KL’s case. Integrated Device Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:IDTI) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Tilray, Inc. (NASDAQ:TLRY) is the least popular one with only 10 bullish hedge fund positions. Kirkland Lake Gold Ltd. (NYSE:KL) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our calculations showed that top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 1.9% in Q2 through May 30th and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by more than 3 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on KL as the stock returned 7% during the same period and outperformed the market by an even larger margin. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
