Madison Funds, an investment management firm, published its “Madison Investors Fund” third-quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A quarterly portfolio return of 0.07% was recorded by the fund’s Class Y shares for the third quarter of 2021, with an 11.86% gain on a year-to-date basis, compared to the S&P 500 Index’s gains of 0.58%, for the third quarter and 15.92% year-to-date (YTD). You can take a look at the fund’s top 5 holdings to have an idea about their best picks for 2021.
Madison Funds, in its Q3 2021 investor letter, mentioned The Progressive Corporation (NYSE: PGR) and discussed its stance on the firm. The Progressive Corporation is a Mayfield, Ohio-based insurance company with a $55.1 billion market capitalization. PGR delivered a -4.73% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are up by 0.65%. The stock closed at $92.62 per share on October 19, 2021.
Here is what Madison Funds has to say about The Progressive Corporation in its Q3 2021 investor letter:
“Regarding business activity, we have had companies report disruptions to current economic results from the aforementioned logistical challenges. Progressive Corporation continues to see higher accident frequencies and severities as people are driving more this year than last, and more recklessly. We expect Progressive to utilize its superior data capabilities to reprice its policies for improved profitability going forward.”
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Based on our calculations, The Progressive Corporation (NYSE: PGR) was not able to clinch a spot in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. PGR was in 44 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the first half of 2021, compared to 45 funds in the previous quarter. The Progressive Corporation (NYSE: PGR) delivered a 0.21% return in the past 3 months.
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 has shown that hedge funds’ small-cap stock picks managed to beat the market by double digits annually between 1999 and 2016, but the margin of outperformance has been declining in recent years. Nevertheless, we were still able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by 115 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 underperformed the market by 10 percentage points annually between 2006 and 2017. Interestingly the margin of underperformance of these stocks has been increasing in recent years. Investors who are long the market and short these stocks would have returned more than 27% annually between 2015 and 2017. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 in our quarterly newsletter.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
