Insider Monkey has processed numerous 13F filings of hedge funds and successful value investors to create an extensive database of hedge fund holdings. The 13F filings show the hedge funds’ and successful investors’ positions as of the end of the first quarter. You can find articles about an individual hedge fund’s trades on numerous financial news websites. However, in this article we will take a look at their collective moves over the last 4.5 years and analyze what the smart money thinks of Tripadvisor Inc (NASDAQ:TRIP) based on that data.
Tripadvisor Inc (NASDAQ:TRIP) has experienced a decrease in hedge fund interest lately. Our calculations also showed that TRIP 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.
Today there are dozens of tools stock market investors use to assess stocks. Some of the less known tools are hedge fund and insider trading interest. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the top hedge fund managers can trounce the market by a very impressive amount (see the details here).
Boykin Curry of Eagle Capital
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 trades like this one. 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 we’re going to review the fresh hedge fund action regarding Tripadvisor Inc (NASDAQ:TRIP).
What have hedge funds been doing with Tripadvisor Inc (NASDAQ:TRIP)?
At the end of the first quarter, a total of 30 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -23% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 27 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in TRIP a year ago. So, let’s find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Boykin Curry’s Eagle Capital Management has the biggest position in Tripadvisor Inc (NASDAQ:TRIP), worth close to $147.6 million, comprising 0.6% of its total 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Renaissance Technologies, with a $71.4 million position; 0.1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Other professional money managers that are bullish consist of Paul Reeder and Edward Shapiro’s PAR Capital Management, Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital and Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Raging Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Tripadvisor Inc (NASDAQ:TRIP), around 3.36% of its 13F portfolio. PAR Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 2.49 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to TRIP.
Seeing as Tripadvisor Inc (NASDAQ:TRIP) has experienced declining sentiment from the smart money, it’s easy to see that there were a few hedgies who sold off their positions entirely by the end of the first quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Brian Bares’s Bares Capital Management dumped the largest stake of the 750 funds monitored by Insider Monkey, comprising an estimated $20.7 million in stock. Ben Levine, Andrew Manuel and Stefan Renold’s fund, LMR Partners, also dumped its stock, about $3.9 million worth. These transactions are important to note, as total hedge fund interest fell by 9 funds by the end of the first quarter.
Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Tripadvisor Inc (NASDAQ:TRIP). These stocks are Tegna Inc (NYSE:TGNA), Parsley Energy Inc (NYSE:PE), FireEye Inc (NASDAQ:FEYE), and BRF SA (NYSE:BRFS). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to TRIP’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| TGNA | 29 | 377379 | 10 |
| PE | 45 | 437697 | -7 |
| FEYE | 32 | 159577 | 2 |
| BRFS | 14 | 34760 | 0 |
| Average | 30 | 252353 | 1.25 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 30 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $252 million. That figure was $492 million in TRIP’s case. Parsley Energy Inc (NYSE:PE) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand BRF SA (NYSE:BRFS) is the least popular one with only 14 bullish hedge fund positions. Tripadvisor Inc (NASDAQ:TRIP) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. This is a slightly negative signal and 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 8.3% in 2020 through the end of May and surpassed the market by 13.2 percentage points. Unfortunately TRIP wasn’t nearly as popular as these 10 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); TRIP investors were disappointed as the stock returned 10.9% during the second quarter 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 most of these stocks already outperformed the market in 2020.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
