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 on CardConnect Corp (NASDAQ:CCN) .
CardConnect Corp (NASDAQ:CCN) was in 8 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2016. This isn’t a bad number for a newly listed company. In order to understand hedge funds’ true sentiment towards a stock, we compare it with similarly valued stocks. That’s why at the end of this article we will examine companies such as Mirati Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:MRTX), Core Molding Technologies, Inc. (NYSEAMEX:CMT), and DHX Media Ltd (USA) (NASDAQ:DHXM) to gather more data points.
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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Keeping this in mind, we’re going to analyze the recent action surrounding CardConnect Corp (NASDAQ:CCN).
What have hedge funds been doing with CardConnect Corp (NASDAQ:CCN)?
At Q3’s end, a total of 8 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock. Since CCN was a newly listed stock, this figure was 0 for the previous quarters. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists a few noteworthy hedge fund managers who decided to take their chances with this stock.
According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Andrew Immerman and Jeremy Schiffman’s Palestra Capital Management holds the most valuable position in CardConnect Corp (NASDAQ:CCN) which has an $18.8 million position in the stock, comprising 1.8% of its 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Wilmot B. Harkey and Daniel Mack’s Nantahala Capital Management holding a $9.2 million position; the fund has 1.1% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other members of the smart money that hold long positions consist of Stephen Loukas, David A. Lorber, Zachary George’s FrontFour Capital Group, John M. Angelo and Michael L. Gordon’s Angelo Gordon & Co. We should note that Nantahala Capital Management is 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.
Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as CardConnect Corp (NASDAQ:CCN) but similarly valued. These stocks are Mirati Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:MRTX), Core Molding Technologies, Inc. (NYSEAMEX:CMT), DHX Media Ltd (USA) (NASDAQ:DHXM), and Corindus Vascular Robotics Inc (NYSEMKT:CVRS). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to CCN’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| MRTX | 13 | 37415 | 3 |
| CMT | 6 | 12227 | 0 |
| DHXM | 5 | 85143 | -2 |
| CVRS | 4 | 23793 | -1 |
As you can see these stocks had an average of 7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $40 million. That figure was $39 million in CCN’s case. Mirati Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:MRTX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Corindus Vascular Robotics Inc (NYSEMKT:CVRS) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. CardConnect Corp (NASDAQ:CCN) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard MRTX might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.
Disclosure: None