Hedge Funds Never Been Less Bullish On Grupo Supervielle S.A. (SUPV)

We at Insider Monkey have gone over 821 13F filings that hedge funds and prominent investors are required to file by the SEC The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of March 31st, near the height of the coronavirus market crash. In this article, we look at what those funds think of Grupo Supervielle S.A. (NYSE:SUPV) based on that data.

Grupo Supervielle S.A. (NYSE:SUPV) has experienced a decrease in enthusiasm from smart money of late. Our calculations also showed that SUPV isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 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.

So, why do we pay attention to hedge fund sentiment before making any investment decisions? Our research has shown that hedge funds’ small-cap stock picks managed to beat the market by double digits annually between 1999 and 2016, but the margin of outperformance has been declining in recent years. Nevertheless, we were still able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 51 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that underperformed the market by 10 percentage points annually between 2006 and 2017. Interestingly the margin of underperformance of these stocks has been increasing in recent years. Investors who are long the market and short these stocks would have returned more than 27% annually between 2015 and 2017. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 in our quarterly newsletter. Even if you aren’t comfortable with shorting stocks, you should at least avoid initiating long positions in stocks that are in our short portfolio.

James Dondero of Highland Capital Management

At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, 2020’s unprecedented market conditions provide us with the highest number of trading opportunities in a decade. So we are checking out stocks recommended/scorned by legendary Bill Miller. We interview hedge fund managers and ask them about their best ideas. If you want to find out the best healthcare stock to buy right now, you can watch our latest hedge fund manager interview here. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. Our best call in 2020 was shorting the market when the S&P 500 was trading at 3150 after realizing the coronavirus pandemic’s significance before most investors. Now let’s take a peek at the new hedge fund action encompassing Grupo Supervielle S.A. (NYSE:SUPV).

Hedge fund activity in Grupo Supervielle S.A. (NYSE:SUPV)

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 4 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -43% from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in SUPV over the last 18 quarters. So, let’s check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Crispin Odey’s Odey Asset Management Group has the largest position in Grupo Supervielle S.A. (NYSE:SUPV), worth close to $0.9 million, comprising 0.1% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by James Dondero of Highland Capital Management, with a $0.3 million position; 0.1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Other professional money managers that are bullish include Renaissance Technologies, Casey Whalen’s Truvvo Partners and . In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Odey Asset Management Group allocated the biggest weight to Grupo Supervielle S.A. (NYSE:SUPV), around 0.15% of its 13F portfolio. Highland Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.06 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to SUPV.

Because Grupo Supervielle S.A. (NYSE:SUPV) has witnessed falling interest from the smart money, it’s easy to see that there is a sect of funds that elected to cut their entire stakes heading into Q4. Intriguingly, Nitin Saigal and Dan Jacobs’s Kora Management dropped the biggest position of the 750 funds followed by Insider Monkey, comprising about $8.8 million in stock, and Zachary Miller’s Parian Global Management was right behind this move, as the fund said goodbye to about $1.1 million worth. These transactions are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 3 funds heading into Q4.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Grupo Supervielle S.A. (NYSE:SUPV) but similarly valued. We will take a look at GrowGeneration Corp. (NASDAQ:GRWG), First Bank (NASDAQ:FRBA), Jianpu Technology Inc. (NYSE:JT), and IVERIC bio, Inc. (NASDAQ:ISEE). All of these stocks’ market caps resemble SUPV’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 9.75 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $21 million. That figure was $1 million in SUPV’s case. IVERIC bio, Inc. (NASDAQ:ISEE) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Jianpu Technology Inc. (NYSE:JT) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Grupo Supervielle S.A. (NYSE:SUPV) is even less popular than JT. Hedge funds clearly dropped the ball on SUPV as the stock delivered strong returns, though hedge funds’ consensus picks still generated respectable returns. 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 8.3% in 2020 through the end of May and still beat the market by 13.2 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on SUPV as the stock returned 28.3% so far in the second quarter and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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