Hedge Funds Are Crazy About Waste Connections, Inc. (WCN)

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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 September 30, so let’s proceed with the discussion of the hedge fund sentiment towards Waste Connections, Inc. (NYSE:WCN).

So, is Waste Connections, Inc. (NYSE:WCN) the right investment to pursue these days? Prominent investors might be taking a bullish view, as the number of bullish hedge fund bets inched up by one during the third quarter and the company was included in the equity portfolios of  29 funds from our database at the end of September. To get a better sense of its popularity, we will also compare WCN to other stocks including BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc. (NASDAQ:BMRN), Symantec Corporation (NASDAQ:SYMC), and Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc (NYSE:HOT) at the end of this article.

Follow Waste Connections Us Inc. (NYSE:WCN)

At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 18% gains over the past 12 months, more than doubling the 8% returns enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs.

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With all of this in mind, let’s view the new action surrounding Waste Connections, Inc. (NYSE:WCN).

How have hedgies been trading Waste Connections, Inc. (NYSE:WCN)?

As stated earlier, 29 investors tracked by Insider Monkey held shares of Waste Connections at the end of September, up by 4% over the quarter. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

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According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Maverick Capital, led by Lee Ainslie, holds the number one position in Waste Connections, Inc. (NYSE:WCN). Maverick Capital has a $439.9 million position in the stock, comprising 5.2% of its 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Doug Silverman and Alexander Klabin of Senator Investment Group, with a $83.4 million position; 1.1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Remaining hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish include Malcolm Fairbairn’s Ascend Capital, Millennium Management, one of the 10 largest hedge funds in the world, and Robert Pohly’s Samlyn Capital. We should note that none of these hedge funds are among our list of the 100 best performing hedge funds which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-microcap stocks.

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