Is ACCO A Good Stock To Buy Now?

With the third-quarter round of 13F filings behind us it is time to take a look at the stocks in which some of the best money managers in the world preferred to invest or sell heading into the fourth quarter. One of these stocks was ACCO Brands Corporation (NYSE:ACCO).

ACCO Brands Corporation (NYSE:ACCO) has seen an increase in hedge fund sentiment lately. ACCO Brands Corporation (NYSE:ACCO) was in 14 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 21. There were 12 hedge funds in our database with ACCO positions at the end of the second quarter. Our calculations also showed that ACCO isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks).

Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

Why do we pay any attention at all to hedge fund sentiment? Our research has shown that a select group of hedge fund holdings outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by 66 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’ll significantly underperform the market. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 and they lost 13% through November 17th. That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is an extremely useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

Paul Tudor Jones of Tudor Investment Corp

At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost real estate prices. So, we recommended this real estate stock to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 15 best blue chip stocks to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our website. With all of this in mind let’s go over the fresh hedge fund action regarding ACCO Brands Corporation (NYSE:ACCO).

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

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 14 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 17% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards ACCO over the last 21 quarters. So, let’s examine which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

The largest stake in ACCO Brands Corporation (NYSE:ACCO) was held by Arrowstreet Capital, which reported holding $9.6 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by D E Shaw with a $3.8 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Millennium Management, Two Sigma Advisors, and AQR Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Skylands Capital allocated the biggest weight to ACCO Brands Corporation (NYSE:ACCO), around 0.15% of its 13F portfolio. Weld Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.04 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ACCO.

Consequently, some big names have been driving this bullishness. ExodusPoint Capital, managed by Michael Gelband, established the biggest position in ACCO Brands Corporation (NYSE:ACCO). ExodusPoint Capital had $0.8 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp also made a $0.8 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, and Minhua Zhang’s Weld Capital Management.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to ACCO Brands Corporation (NYSE:ACCO). We will take a look at Summit Hotel Properties Inc (NYSE:INN), Aerie Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:AERI), Golden Ocean Group Ltd (NASDAQ:GOGL), CIRCOR International, Inc. (NYSE:CIR), Humanigen, Inc. (NASDAQ:HGEN), International Money Express, Inc. (NASDAQ:IMXI), and Molecular Templates, Inc. (NASDAQ:MTEM). This group of stocks’ market caps match ACCO’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 11.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $87 million. That figure was $25 million in ACCO’s case. Molecular Templates, Inc. (NASDAQ:MTEM) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Golden Ocean Group Ltd (NASDAQ:GOGL) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. ACCO Brands Corporation (NYSE:ACCO) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ACCO is 53.5. 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 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.3% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10 percentage points. These stocks gained 32.9% in 2020 through December 8th and still beat the market by 16.2 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on ACCO as the stock returned 43.8% since the end of Q3 (through 12/8) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.

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