The Insider Monkey team has completed processing the quarterly 13F filings for the September quarter submitted by the hedge funds and other money managers included in our extensive database. Most hedge funds have been producing disappointing net returns in recent years, however that was partly due to the poor performance of small-cap stocks in general. Well, small-cap stocks finally turned the corner and have been beating the large-cap stocks by more than 10 percentage points over the last 5 months.This means the relevancy of hedge funds’ public filings became inarguable, as they may reveal numerous high-potential stocks. The following article will discuss the smart money sentiment towards Albany International Corp. (NYSE:AIN).
Albany International Corp. (NYSE:AIN) was in 11 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2016. AIN investors should be aware of an increase in enthusiasm from smart money lately. There were 10 hedge funds in our database with AIN holdings at the end of the previous quarter. The level and the change in hedge fund popularity aren’t the only variables you need to analyze to decipher hedge funds’ perspectives. A stock may witness a boost in popularity but it may still be less popular than similarly priced stocks. That’s why at the end of this article we will examine companies such as KB Home (NYSE:KBH), Scholastic Corp (NASDAQ:SCHL), and Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE:GCI) to gather more data points.
Follow Albany International Corp (NYSE:AIN)
Follow Albany International Corp (NYSE:AIN)
We follow over 700 hedge funds and other institutional investors and by analyzing their quarterly 13F filings, we identify stocks that they are collectively bullish on and develop investment strategies based on this data. One strategy that outperformed the market over the last year involves selecting the 100 best-performing funds and identifying the 30 mid-cap stocks that they are collectively most bullish on. Over the past year, this strategy generated returns of 18%, topping the 8% gain registered by S&P 500 ETFs. We launched this strategy 2.5 years ago and it returned more than 39% since then, vs. 22% gain registered by the S&P 500 ETFs.
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What have hedge funds been doing with Albany International Corp. (NYSE:AIN)?
Heading into the fourth quarter of 2016, a total of 11 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a 10% increase from the second quarter of 2016. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in AIN over the last 5 quarters, which was highly volatile in the first-half of this year. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).
Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Renaissance Technologies, one of the largest hedge funds in the world, has the biggest position in Albany International Corp. (NYSE:AIN), worth close to $39 million. Coming in second is Royce & Associates, led by Chuck Royce, which holds an $8.1 million position. Some other members of the smart money that hold long positions comprise David E. Shaw’s D E Shaw, Mario Gabelli’s GAMCO Investors, and John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors. 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.
