In this article we will analyze whether ViacomCBS Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAC) is a good investment right now by following the lead of some of the best investors in the world and piggybacking their ideas. There’s no better way to get these firms’ immense resources and analytical capabilities working for us than to follow their lead into their best ideas. While not all of these picks will be winners, our research shows that these picks historically outperformed the market by double digits annually.
Is ViacomCBS Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAC) an excellent investment now? Prominent investors were getting more optimistic. The number of bullish hedge fund positions increased by 45 lately. ViacomCBS Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAC) was in 89 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic was previously 64. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that VIAC isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).
In the 21st century investor’s toolkit there are a lot of formulas investors employ to evaluate stocks. A pair of the less known formulas are hedge fund and insider trading activity. Our researchers have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the elite money managers can outclass the S&P 500 by a healthy amount (see the details here). Also, our monthly newsletter’s portfolio of long stock picks returned 206.8% since March 2017 (through May 2021) and beat the S&P 500 Index by more than 115 percentage points. You can download a sample issue of this newsletter on our website .
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Do Hedge Funds Think VIAC Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At first quarter’s end, a total of 89 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 102% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 54 hedge funds with a bullish position in VIAC a year ago. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management has the most valuable position in ViacomCBS Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAC), worth close to $259.2 million, accounting for 0.2% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Renaissance Technologies, which holds a $254.6 million position; the fund has 0.3% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other peers that are bullish contain Benjamin A. Smith’s Laurion Capital Management, George Soros’s Soros Fund Management and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Element Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to ViacomCBS Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAC), around 11.62% of its 13F portfolio. Voleon Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 10.14 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to VIAC.
As one would reasonably expect, some big names were leading the bulls’ herd. Renaissance Technologies, initiated the most valuable position in ViacomCBS Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAC). Renaissance Technologies had $254.6 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. George Soros’s Soros Fund Management also made a $194.3 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new VIAC positions are David Tepper’s Appaloosa Management LP, D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw, and Parag Vora’s HG Vora Capital Management.
Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as ViacomCBS Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAC) but similarly valued. These stocks are Okta, Inc. (NASDAQ:OKTA), Fastenal Company (NASDAQ:FAST), Williams Companies, Inc. (NYSE:WMB), Verisk Analytics, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRSK), Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY), Waste Connections, Inc. (NYSE:WCN), and ResMed Inc. (NYSE:RMD). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to VIAC’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| OKTA | 48 | 1616565 | -13 |
| FAST | 24 | 576286 | -6 |
| WMB | 34 | 475466 | -4 |
| VRSK | 34 | 1584703 | 2 |
| BBY | 33 | 957600 | -5 |
| WCN | 31 | 822237 | -4 |
| RMD | 25 | 313736 | -2 |
| Average | 32.7 | 906656 | -4.6 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 32.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $907 million. That figure was $2350 million in VIAC’s case. Okta, Inc. (NASDAQ:OKTA) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Fastenal Company (NASDAQ:FAST) is the least popular one with only 24 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks ViacomCBS Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAC) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for VIAC 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 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. Unfortunately VIAC wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on VIAC were disappointed as the stock returned -6.1% since the end of the first quarter (through 6/11) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
