How Did Hedge Funds’ Jones Lang LaSalle Inc (JLL) Bets Fare?

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey have plowed through 867 13F filings that hedge funds and well-known value investors are required to file by the SEC. The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of September 30th, when the S&P 500 Index was trading around the 4300 level. Since then investors decided to bet on the economic recovery and a stock market rebound even though we experienced a temporary correction in January. In this article you are going to find out whether hedge funds thought Jones Lang LaSalle Inc (NYSE:JLL) was a good investment heading into the fourth quarter and how the stock traded in comparison to the top hedge fund picks.

Jones Lang LaSalle Inc (NYSE:JLL) has experienced a decrease in support from the world’s most elite money managers in recent months. Jones Lang LaSalle Inc (NYSE:JLL) was in 30 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 31. There were 31 hedge funds in our database with JLL holdings at the end of June. Our calculations also showed that JLL isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings).

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium prices have more than doubled over the past year, so we go through lists like the 10 best EV stocks to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. Keeping this in mind let’s take a look at the fresh hedge fund action regarding Jones Lang LaSalle Inc (NYSE:JLL).

Bruce Kovner of Caxton Associates LP

Do Hedge Funds Think JLL Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2021, a total of 30 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of -3% from the second quarter of 2021. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in JLL over the last 25 quarters. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, David Blood and Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management has the most valuable position in Jones Lang LaSalle Inc (NYSE:JLL), worth close to $1.1533 billion, accounting for 4.8% of its total 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Ariel Investments, managed by John W. Rogers, which holds a $279.5 million position; 2.6% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Other hedge funds and institutional investors with similar optimism contain Lee Ainslie’s Maverick Capital, Robert Pohly’s Samlyn Capital and Doug Silverman and Alexander Klabin’s Senator Investment Group. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Capital Growth Management allocated the biggest weight to Jones Lang LaSalle Inc (NYSE:JLL), around 6.49% of its 13F portfolio. Generation Investment Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 4.79 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to JLL.

Seeing as Jones Lang LaSalle Inc (NYSE:JLL) has experienced falling interest from hedge fund managers, it’s safe to say that there exists a select few money managers that decided to sell off their entire stakes by the end of the third quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Matthew Stadelman’s Diamond Hill Capital dumped the largest stake of the “upper crust” of funds monitored by Insider Monkey, valued at about $27.5 million in stock, and Ben Levine, Andrew Manuel and Stefan Renold’s LMR Partners was right behind this move, as the fund sold off about $17.6 million worth. These moves are intriguing to say the least, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 1 funds by the end of the third quarter.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Jones Lang LaSalle Inc (NYSE:JLL) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Iron Mountain Incorporated (NYSE:IRM), Enel Americas S.A. (NYSE:ENIA), Tenaris S.A. (NYSE:TS), Opendoor Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:OPEN), Fortune Brands Home & Security Inc (NYSE:FBHS), American Homes 4 Rent (NYSE:AMH), and Hasbro, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAS). This group of stocks’ market caps are similar to JLL’s market cap.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 22.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $477 million. That figure was $2108 million in JLL’s case. Opendoor Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:OPEN) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Enel Americas S.A. (NYSE:ENIA) is the least popular one with only 9 bullish hedge fund positions. Jones Lang LaSalle Inc (NYSE:JLL) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for JLL is 73.4. Stocks with higher number of hedge fund positions relative to other stocks as well as relative to their historical range receive a higher sentiment score. Our calculations showed that top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 29.6% in 2021 and still managed to beat the market by another 3.6 percentage points. Hedge funds were somewhat right about betting on JLL as the stock returned 1.1% since the end of September (through January 31st) and outperformed the top 5 hedge fund stocks but not the market. This is a rare phenomenon as top hedge fund stocks usually beat the market over the long-term.

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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.