Here is What Hedge Funds Think About MoneyLion Inc. (ML)

Our extensive research has shown that imitating the smart money can generate significant returns for retail investors, which is why we track nearly 900 active prominent money managers and analyze their quarterly 13F filings. The stocks that are heavily bought by hedge funds historically outperformed the market, though there is no shortage of high profile failures like hedge funds’ 2018 losses in Facebook and Apple. Let’s take a closer look at what the funds we track think about MoneyLion Inc. (NYSE:ML) in this article.

Is MoneyLion Inc. (NYSE:ML) the right pick for your portfolio? Investors who are in the know were buying. The number of long hedge fund bets moved up by 28 recently. MoneyLion Inc. (NYSE:ML) was in 28 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021. Our calculations also showed that ML isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings).

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium prices have more than doubled over the past year, so we go through lists like the 10 best EV 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. Now let’s check out the recent hedge fund action regarding MoneyLion Inc. (NYSE:ML).

Eric Mandelblatt of Soroban Capital Partners

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

At Q3’s end, a total of 28 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 28 from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 0 hedge funds with a bullish position in ML a year ago. So, let’s examine 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, Jose Fernandez’s Stepstone Group has the biggest position in MoneyLion Inc. (NYSE:ML), worth close to $88.9 million, accounting for 5.8% of its total 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Soroban Capital Partners, led by Eric W. Mandelblatt, holding a $28.3 million position; 0.3% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Remaining hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish comprise Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management, John Orrico’s Water Island Capital and Mina Faltas’s Washington Harbour Partners. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Stepstone Group allocated the biggest weight to MoneyLion Inc. (NYSE:ML), around 5.76% of its 13F portfolio. Washington Harbour Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 1.2 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ML.

Now, some big names have been driving this bullishness. Stepstone Group, managed by Jose Fernandez, created the biggest position in MoneyLion Inc. (NYSE:ML). Stepstone Group had $88.9 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Eric W. Mandelblatt’s Soroban Capital Partners also made a $28.3 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new ML positions are Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management, John Orrico’s Water Island Capital, and Mina Faltas’s Washington Harbour Partners.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as MoneyLion Inc. (NYSE:ML) but similarly valued. We will take a look at InterCure Ltd. (NASDAQ:INCR), Grindrod Shipping Holdings Ltd. (NASDAQ:GRIN), PCB Bancorp (NASDAQ:PCB), Empresa Distribuidora y Comercializadora Norte Sociedad Anonima (NYSE:EDN), Sierra Metals Inc. (NYSE:SMTS), Lucira Health, Inc. (NASDAQ:LHDX), and VersaBank (NASDAQ:VBNK). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to ML’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 5.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $15 million. That figure was $202 million in ML’s case. Grindrod Shipping Holdings Ltd. (NASDAQ:GRIN) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Empresa Distribuidora y Comercializadora Norte Sociedad Anonima (NYSE:EDN) is the least popular one with only 2 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks MoneyLion Inc. (NYSE:ML) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ML is 90. 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. 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 31.1% in 2021 through December 9th and still beat the market by 5.1 percentage points. Unfortunately ML wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on ML were disappointed as the stock returned -43.6% since the end of the third quarter (through 12/9) 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 since 2019.

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