Hedge Funds Keep Buying Artisan Partners Asset Management Inc (APAM)

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey have plowed through 823 13F filings that hedge funds and well-known value investors are required to file by the SEC. The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of June 30th, when the S&P 500 Index was trading around the 3100 level. Since the end of March, investors decided to bet on the economic recovery and a stock market rebound. S&P 500 Index returned more than 50% since its bottom. In this article you are going to find out whether hedge funds thought Artisan Partners Asset Management Inc (NYSE:APAM) was a good investment heading into the third quarter and how the stock traded in comparison to the top hedge fund picks.

Artisan Partners Asset Management Inc (NYSE:APAM) has seen an increase in hedge fund sentiment of late. Artisan Partners Asset Management Inc (NYSE:APAM) 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. There were 20 hedge funds in our database with APAM holdings at the end of March. Our calculations also showed that APAM 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.

At the moment there are a large number of tools market participants can use to evaluate publicly traded companies. A couple of the most under-the-radar tools are hedge fund and insider trading sentiment. Our researchers have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the elite fund managers can trounce the S&P 500 by a solid margin (see the details here).

Donald Sussman of Paloma Partners

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 lithium company which could also 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. Keeping this in mind we’re going to check out the new hedge fund action regarding Artisan Partners Asset Management Inc (NYSE:APAM).

How have hedgies been trading Artisan Partners Asset Management Inc (NYSE:APAM)?

Heading into the third quarter of 2020, a total of 21 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 5% from the previous quarter. By comparison, 15 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in APAM a year ago. So, let’s check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

More specifically, Renaissance Technologies was the largest shareholder of Artisan Partners Asset Management Inc (NYSE:APAM), with a stake worth $106.3 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Renaissance Technologies was Fisher Asset Management, which amassed a stake valued at $47.5 million. Royce & Associates, Arrowstreet Capital, and Schonfeld Strategic Advisors 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 Sprott Asset Management allocated the biggest weight to Artisan Partners Asset Management Inc (NYSE:APAM), around 0.57% of its 13F portfolio. Schonfeld Strategic Advisors is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.33 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to APAM.

Consequently, key money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Millennium Management, managed by Israel Englander, assembled the most valuable position in Artisan Partners Asset Management Inc (NYSE:APAM). Millennium Management had $7.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Sander Gerber’s Hudson Bay Capital Management also made a $4.9 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new APAM investors: Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP, Karim Abbadi and Edward McBride’s Centiva Capital, and Donald Sussman’s Paloma Partners.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Artisan Partners Asset Management Inc (NYSE:APAM). These stocks are Tripadvisor Inc (NASDAQ:TRIP), Canada Goose Holdings Inc. (NYSE:GOOS), PotlatchDeltic Corporation (NASDAQ:PCH), Taro Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (NYSE:TARO), Benitec Biopharma Inc. (NASDAQ:BNTC), Home Bancshares, Inc. (Conway, AR) (NASDAQ:HOMB), and CVB Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:CVBF). This group of stocks’ market caps are similar to APAM’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 15.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $171 million. That figure was $262 million in APAM’s case. Tripadvisor Inc (NASDAQ:TRIP) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Benitec Biopharma Inc. (NASDAQ:BNTC) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Artisan Partners Asset Management Inc (NYSE:APAM) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for APAM is 73. 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 gained 24.8% in 2020 through the end of third quarter and still beat the market by 19.3 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on APAM as the stock returned 22.1% during Q3 and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.

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