A whopping number of 13F filings filed with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has been processed by Insider Monkey so that individual investors can look at the overall hedge fund sentiment towards the stocks included in their watchlists. These freshly-submitted public filings disclose money managers’ equity positions as of the end of the three-month period that ended December 31, so let’s proceed with the discussion of the hedge fund sentiment on Syneos Health, Inc. (NASDAQ:SYNH).
Is Syneos Health, Inc. (NASDAQ:SYNH) a healthy stock for your portfolio? Investors who are in the know are selling. The number of bullish hedge fund positions shrunk by 3 in recent months. Our calculations also showed that SYNH isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds. SYNH was in 24 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2018. There were 27 hedge funds in our database with SYNH positions at the end of the previous quarter.
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.
Let’s take a peek at the fresh hedge fund action surrounding Syneos Health, Inc. (NASDAQ:SYNH).
How are hedge funds trading Syneos Health, Inc. (NASDAQ:SYNH)?
At the end of the fourth quarter, a total of 24 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -11% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards SYNH over the last 14 quarters. With hedgies’ capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of notable hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).
Among these funds, Viking Global held the most valuable stake in Syneos Health, Inc. (NASDAQ:SYNH), which was worth $69.1 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was Millennium Management which amassed $30.6 million worth of shares. Moreover, Cardinal Capital, D E Shaw, and Harbor Spring Capital were also bullish on Syneos Health, Inc. (NASDAQ:SYNH), allocating a large percentage of their portfolios to this stock.
Seeing as Syneos Health, Inc. (NASDAQ:SYNH) has faced falling interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, we can see that there were a few money managers who were dropping their full holdings in the third quarter. It’s worth mentioning that David Brown’s Hawk Ridge Management sold off the largest investment of all the hedgies monitored by Insider Monkey, totaling an estimated $24.6 million in stock. Jeremy Green’s fund, Redmile Group, also dumped its stock, about $22.1 million worth. These transactions are intriguing to say the least, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 3 funds in the third quarter.
Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Syneos Health, Inc. (NASDAQ:SYNH) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Embraer SA (NYSE:ERJ), PacWest Bancorp (NASDAQ:PACW), Kinross Gold Corporation (NYSE:KGC), and Murphy Oil Corporation (NYSE:MUR). This group of stocks’ market caps are similar to SYNH’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| ERJ | 10 | 74442 | -1 |
| PACW | 21 | 209624 | -5 |
| KGC | 17 | 300562 | -1 |
| MUR | 18 | 181712 | -5 |
| Average | 16.5 | 191585 | -3 |
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 $192 million. That figure was $213 million in SYNH’s case. PacWest Bancorp (NASDAQ:PACW) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Embraer SA (NYSE:ERJ) is the least popular one with only 10 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Syneos Health, Inc. (NASDAQ:SYNH) 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. Hedge funds were also right about betting on SYNH, though not to the same extent, as the stock returned 16.8% and outperformed the market as well.
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
