Our extensive research has shown that imitating the smart money can generate significant returns for retail investors, which is why we track nearly 750 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 Johnson Outdoors Inc. (NASDAQ:JOUT) in this article.
Johnson Outdoors Inc. (NASDAQ:JOUT) was in 11 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. JOUT shareholders have witnessed a decrease in hedge fund interest of late. There were 12 hedge funds in our database with JOUT holdings at the end of the previous quarter. Our calculations also showed that jout isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds.
In the financial world there are a large number of tools investors have at their disposal to grade stocks. A pair of the most under-the-radar tools are hedge fund and insider trading indicators. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best fund managers can outperform the broader indices by a solid amount. Insider Monkey’s flagship best performing hedge funds strategy returned 25.8% year to date (through May 30th) and outperformed the market even though it draws its stock picks among small-cap stocks. This strategy also outperformed the market by 40 percentage points since its inception (see the details here). That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is a useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.
Let’s analyze the latest hedge fund action encompassing Johnson Outdoors Inc. (NASDAQ:JOUT).
Hedge fund activity in Johnson Outdoors Inc. (NASDAQ:JOUT)
Heading into the second quarter of 2019, a total of 11 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -8% from the fourth quarter of 2018. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards JOUT over the last 15 quarters. So, let’s review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
The largest stake in Johnson Outdoors Inc. (NASDAQ:JOUT) was held by Renaissance Technologies, which reported holding $24.9 million worth of stock at the end of March. It was followed by Royce & Associates with a $16.5 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included AQR Capital Management, Marshall Wace LLP, and Two Sigma Advisors.
Because Johnson Outdoors Inc. (NASDAQ:JOUT) has witnessed falling interest from the aggregate hedge fund industry, it’s safe to say that there exists a select few money managers who were dropping their positions entirely heading into Q3. It’s worth mentioning that Parsa Kiai’s Steamboat Capital Partners cut the largest stake of the “upper crust” of funds tracked by Insider Monkey, valued at an estimated $11.5 million in stock, and Gavin Saitowitz and Cisco J. del Valle’s Springbok Capital was right behind this move, as the fund said goodbye to about $0.2 million worth. These transactions are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest was cut by 1 funds heading into Q3.
Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Johnson Outdoors Inc. (NASDAQ:JOUT). These stocks are Univest Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:UVSP), Ituran Location and Control Ltd. (NASDAQ:ITRN), Noble Corporation plc (NYSE:NE), and ViewRay, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRAY). This group of stocks’ market valuations match JOUT’s market valuation.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| UVSP | 9 | 35349 | 4 |
| ITRN | 11 | 126208 | 2 |
| NE | 23 | 102367 | -1 |
| VRAY | 23 | 264047 | 2 |
| Average | 16.5 | 131993 | 1.75 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 16.5 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $132 million. That figure was $60 million in JOUT’s case. Noble Corporation plc (NYSE:NE) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Univest Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:UVSP) is the least popular one with only 9 bullish hedge fund positions. Johnson Outdoors Inc. (NASDAQ:JOUT) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our calculations showed that top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 6.2% in Q2 through June 19th and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by nearly 3 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on JOUT as the stock returned 11.6% during the same time frame and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
