Hedge Funds Never Been This Bullish On Boston Properties, Inc. (BXP)

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. We at 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. Stocks kept going up since then. In this article we look at how hedge funds traded Boston Properties, Inc. (NYSE:BXP) and determine whether the smart money was really smart about this stock.

Is Boston Properties, Inc. (NYSE:BXP) an exceptional stock to buy now? The smart money was taking a bullish view. The number of long hedge fund bets rose by 7 lately. Boston Properties, Inc. (NYSE:BXP) was in 36 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistics is 29. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that BXP 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.

In today’s marketplace there are several methods shareholders can use to assess their holdings. A couple of the less utilized methods are hedge fund and insider trading activity. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the top fund managers can outperform their index-focused peers by a superb amount (see the details here).

Dmitry Balyasny of Balyasny Asset Management

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 junior gold mining stock. Legal marijuana is one of the fastest growing industries right now, so we are also checking out stock pitches like “the Starbucks of cannabis” to identify the next tenbagger. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. 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. Now let’s review the fresh hedge fund action regarding Boston Properties, Inc. (NYSE:BXP).

What have hedge funds been doing with Boston Properties, Inc. (NYSE:BXP)?

Heading into the third quarter of 2020, a total of 36 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 24% from the previous quarter. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in BXP over the last 20 quarters. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Among these funds, D E Shaw held the most valuable stake in Boston Properties, Inc. (NYSE:BXP), which was worth $100 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was Citadel Investment Group which amassed $60.9 million worth of shares. Millennium Management, Renaissance Technologies, and Rima Senvest Management 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 Hill Winds Capital allocated the biggest weight to Boston Properties, Inc. (NYSE:BXP), around 5.19% of its 13F portfolio. Waterfront Capital Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 2.99 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to BXP.

As one would reasonably expect, specific money managers have been driving this bullishness. Rima Senvest Management, managed by Richard Mashaal, initiated the most valuable position in Boston Properties, Inc. (NYSE:BXP). Rima Senvest Management had $45.8 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management also initiated a $34.2 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new BXP positions are John Khoury’s Long Pond Capital, Eduardo Abush’s Waterfront Capital Partners, and Daniel Johnson’s Gillson Capital.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Boston Properties, Inc. (NYSE:BXP). We will take a look at EPAM Systems Inc (NYSE:EPAM), Teradyne, Inc. (NYSE:TER), Dover Corporation (NYSE:DOV), Rollins, Inc. (NYSE:ROL), International Paper Company (NYSE:IP), Hartford Financial Services Group Inc (NYSE:HIG), and Tyler Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:TYL). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to BXP’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 33.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $684 million. That figure was $539 million in BXP’s case. Dover Corporation (NYSE:DOV) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand EPAM Systems Inc (NYSE:EPAM) is the least popular one with only 28 bullish hedge fund positions. Boston Properties, Inc. (NYSE:BXP) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for BXP is 73.3. 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. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. 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 33% in 2020 through the end of August and beat the market by 23.2 percentage points. Unfortunately BXP wasn’t nearly as popular as these 10 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on BXP were disappointed as the stock returned -3.9% during the same time period and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds as many of these stocks already outperformed the market so far this year.

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