Here is What Hedge Funds Think About PetroChina Company Limited (PTR)

After several tireless days we have finished crunching the numbers from nearly 817 13F filings issued by the elite hedge funds and other investment firms that we track at Insider Monkey, which disclosed those firms’ equity portfolios as of September 30th. The results of that effort will be put on display in this article, as we share valuable insight into the smart money sentiment towards PetroChina Company Limited (NYSE:PTR).

PetroChina Company Limited (NYSE:PTR) shares haven’t seen a lot of action during the second quarter. Overall, hedge fund sentiment was unchanged. The stock was in 6 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. Our calculations also showed that PTR isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks). The level and the change in hedge fund popularity aren’t the only variables you need to analyze to decipher hedge funds’ perspectives. A stock may witness a boost in popularity but it may still be less popular than similarly priced stocks. That’s why at the end of this article we will examine companies such as Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ:SBUX), Royal Bank of Canada (NYSE:RY), and Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC) to gather more data points.

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 66 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 13% through November 17th. That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is an extremely useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

David Siegel of Two Sigma Advisors

At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost real estate prices. So, we recommended this real estate stock to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 15 best blue chip stocks to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. 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 website. Keeping this in mind we’re going to take a glance at the fresh hedge fund action surrounding PetroChina Company Limited (NYSE:PTR).

How have hedgies been trading PetroChina Company Limited (NYSE:PTR)?

At third quarter’s end, a total of 6 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 0% from the second quarter of 2020. By comparison, 13 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in PTR 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.

The largest stake in PetroChina Company Limited (NYSE:PTR) was held by Renaissance Technologies, which reported holding $38.5 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Arrowstreet Capital with a $17.7 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included CSat Investment Advisory, Two Sigma Advisors, and Citadel Investment Group. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position CSat Investment Advisory allocated the biggest weight to PetroChina Company Limited (NYSE:PTR), around 0.25% of its 13F portfolio. Renaissance Technologies is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.04 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to PTR.

We view hedge fund activity in the stock unfavorable, but in this case there was only a single hedge fund selling its entire position: Millennium Management. One hedge fund selling its entire position doesn’t always imply a bearish intent. Theoretically a hedge fund may decide to sell a promising position in order to invest the proceeds in a more promising idea. However, we don’t think this is the case in this case because only one of the 800+ hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey identified as a viable investment and initiated a position in the stock (that fund was ExodusPoint Capital).

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to PetroChina Company Limited (NYSE:PTR). We will take a look at Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ:SBUX), Royal Bank of Canada (NYSE:RY), Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC), Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD), GlaxoSmithKline plc (NYSE:GSK), Sony Corporation (NYSE:SNE), and The Boeing Company (NYSE:BA). This group of stocks’ market values are closest to PTR’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 49 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $2974 million. That figure was $60 million in PTR’s case. Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Royal Bank of Canada (NYSE:RY) is the least popular one with only 16 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks PetroChina Company Limited (NYSE:PTR) is even less popular than RY. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for PTR is 17.9. 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. Hedge funds clearly dropped the ball on PTR as the stock delivered strong returns, though hedge funds’ consensus picks still generated respectable returns. Our calculations showed that top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.3% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10 percentage points. These stocks gained 30.7% in 2020 through November 27th and still beat the market by 16.1 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on PTR as the stock returned 15.5% since Q3 (through November 27th) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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