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 Capital City Bank Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CCBG) based on that data.
Capital City Bank Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CCBG) was in 3 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. CCBG investors should be aware of a decrease in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds lately. There were 5 hedge funds in our database with CCBG holdings at the end of the previous quarter. Our calculations also showed that CCBG 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 44 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.
Paul Marshall of Marshall Wace
At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, legendary investor Bill Miller told investors to sell 7 extremely popular recession stocks last month. So, we went through his list and recommended another stock with 100% upside potential instead. We interview hedge fund managers and ask them about their best ideas. You can watch our latest hedge fund manager interview here and find out the name of the large-cap healthcare stock that Sio Capital’s Michael Castor expects to double. 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 S&P 500 was trading at 3150 after realizing the coronavirus pandemic’s significance before most investors. Keeping this in mind let’s view the key hedge fund action regarding Capital City Bank Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CCBG).
What have hedge funds been doing with Capital City Bank Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CCBG)?
At Q1’s end, a total of 3 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -40% from the fourth quarter of 2019. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards CCBG over the last 18 quarters. So, let’s review 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, Renaissance Technologies has the largest position in Capital City Bank Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CCBG), worth close to $5.6 million, comprising less than 0.1%% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Citadel Investment Group, led by Ken Griffin, holding a $0.6 million position; less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Renaissance Technologies allocated the biggest weight to Capital City Bank Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CCBG), around 0.01% of its 13F portfolio. Royce & Associates is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 0.0047 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CCBG.
Because Capital City Bank Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CCBG) has witnessed declining sentiment from hedge fund managers, we can see that there were a few money managers that elected to cut their full holdings last quarter. Intriguingly, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management said goodbye to the biggest stake of all the hedgies followed by Insider Monkey, comprising close to $3.3 million in stock. Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s fund, Marshall Wace LLP, also dumped its stock, about $0.7 million worth. These transactions are intriguing to say the least, as aggregate hedge fund interest was cut by 2 funds last quarter.
Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Capital City Bank Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CCBG) but similarly valued. We will take a look at DMC Global Inc. (NASDAQ:BOOM), Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corp (NASDAQ:PGC), Organogenesis Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:ORGO), and NGL Energy Partners LP (NYSE:NGL). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble CCBG’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| BOOM | 12 | 22475 | -8 |
| PGC | 18 | 36066 | 1 |
| ORGO | 5 | 2903 | -3 |
| NGL | 4 | 3343 | 0 |
| Average | 9.75 | 16197 | -2.5 |
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 $16 million. That figure was $7 million in CCBG’s case. Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corp (NASDAQ:PGC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand NGL Energy Partners LP (NYSE:NGL) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Capital City Bank Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CCBG) is even less popular than NGL. Hedge funds dodged a bullet by taking a bearish stance towards CCBG. Our calculations showed that the top 10 most popular hedge fund stocks returned 41.4% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10.1 percentage points. These stocks gained 7.9% in 2020 through May 22nd but managed to beat the market by 15.6 percentage points. Unfortunately CCBG wasn’t nearly as popular as these 10 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was very bearish); CCBG investors were disappointed as the stock returned -7.2% during the second quarter (through May 22nd) 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 so far in 2020.
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
