It was a rough fourth quarter for many hedge funds, which were naturally unable to overcome the big dip in the broad market, as the S&P 500 fell by about 4.8% during 2018 and average hedge fund losing about 1%. The Russell 2000, composed of smaller companies, performed even worse, trailing the S&P by more than 6 percentage points, as investors fled less-known quantities for safe havens. Luckily hedge funds were shifting their holdings into large-cap stocks. The 20 most popular hedge fund stocks actually generated an average return of 18.7% so far in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF by 6.6 percentage points. We are done processing the latest 13f filings and in this article we will study how hedge fund sentiment towards IDACORP Inc (NYSE:IDA) changed during the first quarter.
Is IDACORP Inc (NYSE:IDA) a healthy stock for your portfolio? Money managers are getting less optimistic. The number of long hedge fund positions were trimmed by 2 lately. Our calculations also showed that ida isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds. IDA was in 18 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2019. There were 20 hedge funds in our database with IDA positions at the end of the previous quarter.
Today there are a lot of signals investors use to analyze publicly traded companies. Some of the most under-the-radar signals are hedge fund and insider trading signals. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the elite money managers can outperform the market by a significant amount (see the details here).
Let’s analyze the new hedge fund action surrounding IDACORP Inc (NYSE:IDA).
How are hedge funds trading IDACORP Inc (NYSE:IDA)?
At Q1’s end, a total of 18 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -10% from the fourth quarter of 2018. On the other hand, there were a total of 11 hedge funds with a bullish position in IDA a year ago. So, let’s check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
Among these funds, Renaissance Technologies held the most valuable stake in IDACORP Inc (NYSE:IDA), which was worth $115.2 million at the end of the first quarter. On the second spot was Fisher Asset Management which amassed $33.4 million worth of shares. Moreover, AQR Capital Management, Winton Capital Management, and GLG Partners were also bullish on IDACORP Inc (NYSE:IDA), allocating a large percentage of their portfolios to this stock.
Judging by the fact that IDACORP Inc (NYSE:IDA) has faced declining sentiment from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, logic holds that there were a few hedge funds that slashed their entire stakes last quarter. Intriguingly, Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP sold off the biggest position of the 700 funds watched by Insider Monkey, valued at close to $3.5 million in stock, and Matthew Tewksbury’s Stevens Capital Management was right behind this move, as the fund cut about $2.6 million worth. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as total hedge fund interest was cut by 2 funds last quarter.
Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to IDACORP Inc (NYSE:IDA). These stocks are Seaboard Corporation (NYSE:SEB), Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico, S.A.B. de C.V. (NYSE:PAC), Antero Midstream Corp (NYSE:AM), and GDS Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:GDS). All of these stocks’ market caps match IDA’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEB | 11 | 68653 | 1 |
| PAC | 7 | 85862 | 4 |
| AM | 19 | 321459 | 4 |
| GDS | 33 | 846857 | 8 |
| Average | 17.5 | 330708 | 4.25 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 17.5 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $331 million. That figure was $244 million in IDA’s case. GDS Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:GDS) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico, S.A.B. de C.V. (NYSE:PAC) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. IDACORP Inc (NYSE:IDA) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our calculations showed that top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 1.9% in Q2 through May 30th and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by more than 3 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on IDA, though not to the same extent, as the stock returned 0.3% during the same time frame and outperformed the market as well.
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
