Is SSR Mining Inc. (NASDAQ:SSRM) 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 SSR Mining Inc. (NASDAQ:SSRM) a healthy stock for your portfolio? Hedge funds are taking a bullish view. The number of bullish hedge fund bets went up by 4 recently. Our calculations also showed that SSRM isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds. SSRM was in 12 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2018. There were 8 hedge funds in our database with SSRM holdings at the end of the previous quarter.
In the financial world there are a large number of tools investors have at their disposal to grade stocks. A pair of the most under-the-radar tools are hedge fund and insider trading indicators. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best fund managers can outperform the broader indices by a solid amount. Insider Monkey’s flagship best performing hedge funds strategy returned 20.7% year to date (through March 12th) and outperformed the market even though it draws its stock picks among small-cap stocks. This strategy also outperformed the market by 32 percentage points since its inception (see the details here). That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is a useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.
Let’s take a look at the latest hedge fund action regarding SSR Mining Inc. (NASDAQ:SSRM).
How have hedgies been trading SSR Mining Inc. (NASDAQ:SSRM)?
At Q4’s end, a total of 12 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 50% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 8 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in SSRM a year ago. With hedge funds’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).
According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies has the largest position in SSR Mining Inc. (NASDAQ:SSRM), worth close to $69.9 million, amounting to 0.1% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Peter Franklin Palmedo of Sun Valley Gold, with a $21.3 million position; 1.8% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Other members of the smart money with similar optimism encompass Eric Sprott’s Sprott Asset Management, and John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors.
As one would reasonably expect, specific money managers were breaking ground themselves. Citadel Investment Group, managed by Ken Griffin, initiated the most outsized position in SSR Mining Inc. (NASDAQ:SSRM). Citadel Investment Group had $1.8 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Israel Englander’s Millennium Management also made a $1 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Mark Broach’s Manatuck Hill Partners, Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP, and David Costen Haley’s HBK Investments.
Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to SSR Mining Inc. (NASDAQ:SSRM). These stocks are Callaway Golf Company (NYSE:ELY), Insight Enterprises, Inc. (NASDAQ:NSIT), World Fuel Services Corporation (NYSE:INT), and WildHorse Resource Development Corporation (NYSE:WRD). This group of stocks’ market valuations match SSRM’s market valuation.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| ELY | 23 | 138979 | -4 |
| NSIT | 21 | 93922 | -1 |
| INT | 24 | 73147 | 11 |
| WRD | 18 | 93384 | -2 |
| Average | 21.5 | 99858 | 1 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 21.5 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $100 million. That figure was $111 million in SSRM’s case. World Fuel Services Corporation (NYSE:INT) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand WildHorse Resource Development Corporation (NYSE:WRD) is the least popular one with only 18 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks SSR Mining Inc. (NASDAQ:SSRM) is even less popular than WRD. Hedge funds dodged a bullet by taking a bearish stance towards SSRM. Our calculations showed that the top 15 most popular hedge fund stocks returned 24.2% through April 22nd and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by more than 7 percentage points. Unfortunately SSRM wasn’t nearly as popular as these 15 stock (hedge fund sentiment was very bearish); SSRM investors were disappointed as the stock returned -4.4% and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 15 most popular stocks) among hedge funds as 13 of these stocks already outperformed the market this year.
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.