Here is How Hedge Funds Traded TORM plc (TRMD) During The Crash

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 821 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 March 31st, a week after the market trough. In this article we look at what those investors think of TORM plc (NASDAQ:TRMD).

TORM plc (NASDAQ:TRMD) investors should pay attention to an increase in hedge fund interest recently. TRMD was in 4 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. There were 3 hedge funds in our database with TRMD holdings at the end of the previous quarter. Our calculations also showed that TRMD 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.

Hedge funds’ reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn’t keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Our research was 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’ll significantly underperform the market. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 and they lost 36% through May 18th. That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is an extremely useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital Management

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. 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 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 fresh hedge fund action regarding TORM plc (NASDAQ:TRMD).

What have hedge funds been doing with TORM plc (NASDAQ:TRMD)?

At Q1’s end, a total of 4 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 33% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 4 hedge funds with a bullish position in TRMD a year ago. So, let’s see 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, Oaktree Capital Management, managed by Howard Marks, holds the number one position in TORM plc (NASDAQ:TRMD). Oaktree Capital Management has a $415.6 million position in the stock, comprising 11.7% of its 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Arrowstreet Capital, managed by Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell, which holds a $1.8 million position; less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Remaining members of the smart money that are bullish contain Renaissance Technologies, Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP and . In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Oaktree Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to TORM plc (NASDAQ:TRMD), around 11.7% of its 13F portfolio. Arrowstreet Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.01 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to TRMD.

Consequently, key money managers have jumped into TORM plc (NASDAQ:TRMD) headfirst. Marshall Wace LLP, managed by Paul Marshall and Ian Wace, assembled the most outsized position in TORM plc (NASDAQ:TRMD). Marshall Wace LLP had $0.3 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as TORM plc (NASDAQ:TRMD) but similarly valued. These stocks are Invesco Mortgage Capital Inc (NYSE:IVR), Ambac Financial Group, Inc. (NYSE:AMBC), Collegium Pharmaceutical Inc (NASDAQ:COLL), and AVROBIO, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVRO). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to TRMD’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 17 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $102 million. That figure was $420 million in TRMD’s case. Collegium Pharmaceutical Inc (NASDAQ:COLL) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Invesco Mortgage Capital Inc (NYSE:IVR) is the least popular one with only 15 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks TORM plc (NASDAQ:TRMD) is even less popular than IVR. Hedge funds dodged a bullet by taking a bearish stance towards TRMD. 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 8.3% in 2020 through the end of May but managed to beat the market by 13.2 percentage points. Unfortunately TRMD wasn’t nearly as popular as these 10 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was very bearish); TRMD investors were disappointed as the stock returned 7.2% during the second quarter (through the end of May) 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.