The government requires hedge funds and wealthy investors that crossed the $100 million equity holdings threshold are required to file a report that shows their positions at the end of every quarter. Even though it isn’t the intention, these filings level the playing field for ordinary investors. The latest round of 13F filings disclosed the funds’ positions on December 31. We at Insider Monkey have made an extensive database of nearly 750 of those elite funds and prominent investors’ filings. In this article, we analyze how these elite funds and prominent investors traded MAXIMUS, Inc. (NYSE:MMS) based on those filings.
MAXIMUS, Inc. (NYSE:MMS) investors should be aware of an increase in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds lately. MMS was in 22 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2018. There were 20 hedge funds in our database with MMS positions at the end of the previous quarter. Our calculations also showed that MMS 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 20.7% year to date (through March 12th) and outperformed the market even though it draws its stock picks among small-cap stocks. This strategy also outperformed the market by 32 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.
Cliff Asness of AQR Capital Management
We’re going to go over the key hedge fund action regarding MAXIMUS, Inc. (NYSE:MMS).
How are hedge funds trading MAXIMUS, Inc. (NYSE:MMS)?
At Q4’s end, a total of 22 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 10% from the second quarter of 2018. On the other hand, there were a total of 20 hedge funds with a bullish position in MMS 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.
According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Noam Gottesman’s GLG Partners has the largest position in MAXIMUS, Inc. (NYSE:MMS), worth close to $67.7 million, corresponding to 0.3% of its total 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is P2 Capital Partners, managed by Claus Moller, which holds a $61.6 million position; the fund has 6.2% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining professional money managers that hold long positions include Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management, Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital and Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies.
As aggregate interest increased, key money managers have been driving this bullishness. Stevens Capital Management, managed by Matthew Tewksbury, initiated the biggest position in MAXIMUS, Inc. (NYSE:MMS). Stevens Capital Management had $3.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management also made a $1.2 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management, Hoon Kim’s Quantinno Capital, and Mike Vranos’s Ellington.
Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to MAXIMUS, Inc. (NYSE:MMS). These stocks are AECOM (NYSE:ACM), Seaboard Corporation (NYSE:SEB), SYNNEX Corporation (NYSE:SNX), and Medidata Solutions Inc (NASDAQ:MDSO). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to MMS’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| ACM | 18 | 321816 | 0 |
| SEB | 10 | 64098 | 1 |
| SNX | 11 | 163961 | -6 |
| MDSO | 11 | 145668 | -3 |
| Average | 12.5 | 173886 | -2 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 12.5 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $174 million. That figure was $303 million in MMS’s case. AECOM (NYSE:ACM) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Seaboard Corporation (NYSE:SEB) is the least popular one with only 10 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks MAXIMUS, Inc. (NYSE:MMS) is more popular among hedge funds. Our calculations showed that top 15 most popular stocks) among hedge funds returned 24.2% through April 22nd and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by more than 7 percentage points. Unfortunately MMS wasn’t nearly as popular as these 15 stock and hedge funds that were betting on MMS were disappointed as the stock returned 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 15 most popular stocks) among hedge funds as 13 of these stocks already outperformed the market this year.
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
