Here is What Hedge Funds Think About Jones Lang LaSalle Inc (JLL)

A whopping number of 13F filings filed with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has been processed by Insider Monkey so that individual investors can look at the overall hedge fund sentiment towards the stocks included in their watchlists. These freshly-submitted public filings disclose money managers’ equity positions as of the end of the three-month period that ended March 31st, so let’s proceed with the discussion of the hedge fund sentiment on Jones Lang LaSalle Inc (NYSE:JLL).

Is Jones Lang LaSalle Inc (NYSE:JLL) a good investment today? The smart money was turning less bullish. The number of long hedge fund positions were cut by 3 recently. Jones Lang LaSalle Inc (NYSE:JLL) was in 20 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic is 31. Our calculations also showed that JLL isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

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 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 115 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.

John Rogers of Ariel Investments

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Chuck Schumer recently stated that marijuana legalization will be a Senate priority. So, we are checking out this under the radar stock that will benefit from this. We go through lists like the 10 best battery stocks to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our homepage. With all of this in mind let’s take a peek at the latest hedge fund action regarding Jones Lang LaSalle Inc (NYSE:JLL).

Do Hedge Funds Think JLL Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?

At the end of March, a total of 20 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of -13% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 26 hedge funds with a bullish position in JLL a year ago. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

Among these funds, Generation Investment Management held the most valuable stake in Jones Lang LaSalle Inc (NYSE:JLL), which was worth $842 million at the end of the fourth quarter. On the second spot was Ariel Investments which amassed $186.1 million worth of shares. Zimmer Partners, Millennium Management, and Motley Fool Asset 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 Marlowe Partners allocated the biggest weight to Jones Lang LaSalle Inc (NYSE:JLL), around 4.37% of its 13F portfolio. Generation Investment Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 3.53 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to JLL.

Since Jones Lang LaSalle Inc (NYSE:JLL) has experienced a decline in interest from the aggregate hedge fund industry, we can see that there were a few money managers that decided to sell off their entire stakes in the first quarter. Intriguingly, John Smith Clark’s Southpoint Capital Advisors cut the biggest investment of all the hedgies monitored by Insider Monkey, worth about $59.3 million in stock. Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s fund, Arrowstreet Capital, also dumped its stock, about $25.3 million worth. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as total hedge fund interest fell by 3 funds in the first quarter.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Jones Lang LaSalle Inc (NYSE:JLL) but similarly valued. These stocks are Flex Ltd. (NASDAQ:FLEX), Sensata Technologies Holding plc (NYSE:ST), Neurocrine Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:NBIX), ImmunityBio, Inc. (NASDAQ:IBRX), Axon Enterprise, Inc. (NASDAQ:AXON), Sasol Limited (NYSE:SSL), and Kirkland Lake Gold Ltd. (NYSE:KL). This group of stocks’ market values are closest to JLL’s market value.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 24.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $735 million. That figure was $1241 million in JLL’s case. Flex Ltd. (NASDAQ:FLEX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand ImmunityBio, Inc. (NASDAQ:IBRX) is the least popular one with only 6 bullish hedge fund positions. Jones Lang LaSalle Inc (NYSE:JLL) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for JLL is 38. 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 negative signal and we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. Our calculations showed that top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 23.8% in 2021 through July 16th and surpassed the market again by 7.7 percentage points. Unfortunately JLL wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); JLL investors were disappointed as the stock returned 7.1% since the end of March (through 7/16) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market in 2021.

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