As we already know from media reports and hedge fund investor letters, hedge funds delivered their best returns in a decade. Most investors who decided to stick with hedge funds after a rough 2018 recouped their losses by the end of the fourth quarter of 2019. A significant number of hedge funds continued their strong performance in 2020 and 2021 as well. We get to see hedge funds’ thoughts towards the market and individual stocks by aggregating their quarterly portfolio movements and reading their investor letters. In this article, we will particularly take a look at what hedge funds think about Bank First Corp (NASDAQ:BFC).
Is BFC stock a buy? Bank First Corp (NASDAQ:BFC) has seen an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers lately. Bank First Corp (NASDAQ:BFC) was in 4 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic is 4. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that BFC isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).
At the moment there are a lot of signals stock traders employ to value their stock investments. Some of the most innovative signals are hedge fund and insider trading activity. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the top investment managers can beat the S&P 500 by a solid amount (see the details here). Also, our monthly newsletter’s portfolio of long stock picks returned 206.8% since March 2017 (through May 2021) and beat the S&P 500 Index by more than 115 percentage points. You can download a sample issue of this newsletter on our website .
Fred DiSanto of Ancora Advisors
At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, an activist hedge fund wants to buy this $27 biotech stock for $50. So, we recommended a long position to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 10 best battery 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. 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 homepage. Keeping this in mind let’s take a look at the recent hedge fund action encompassing Bank First Corp (NASDAQ:BFC).
Do Hedge Funds Think BFC Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At Q1’s end, a total of 4 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 100% from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in BFC over the last 23 quarters. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).
According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Citadel Investment Group, managed by Ken Griffin, holds the most valuable position in Bank First Corp (NASDAQ:BFC). Citadel Investment Group has a $0.9 million position in the stock, comprising less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Renaissance Technologies, which holds a $0.3 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other professional money managers that hold long positions contain John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors, Frederick DiSanto’s Ancora Advisors and . In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Two Sigma Advisors allocated the biggest weight to Bank First Corp (NASDAQ:BFC), around 0.0008% of its 13F portfolio. Ancora Advisors is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.0006 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to BFC.
As industrywide interest jumped, key hedge funds were leading the bulls’ herd. Renaissance Technologies, established the biggest position in Bank First Corp (NASDAQ:BFC). Renaissance Technologies had $0.3 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors also made a $0.3 million investment in the stock during the quarter.
Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Bank First Corp (NASDAQ:BFC) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Genius Brands International, Inc. (NASDAQ:GNUS), Aspen Aerogels Inc (NYSE:ASPN), Ontrak, Inc. (NASDAQ:OTRK), Magenta Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:MGTA), Dynex Capital Inc (NYSE:DX), Rayonier Advanced Materials Inc (NYSE:RYAM), and Titan Machinery Inc. (NASDAQ:TITN). This group of stocks’ market values match BFC’s market value.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| GNUS | 6 | 5422 | 0 |
| ASPN | 13 | 88783 | 4 |
| OTRK | 7 | 11834 | -6 |
| MGTA | 17 | 123130 | 1 |
| DX | 10 | 23691 | 0 |
| RYAM | 16 | 60987 | 3 |
| TITN | 12 | 41243 | -1 |
| Average | 11.6 | 50727 | 0.1 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 11.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $51 million. That figure was $2 million in BFC’s case. Magenta Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:MGTA) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Genius Brands International, Inc. (NASDAQ:GNUS) is the least popular one with only 6 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Bank First Corp (NASDAQ:BFC) is even less popular than GNUS. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for BFC is 37. 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. Hedge funds dodged a bullet by taking a bearish stance towards BFC. Our calculations showed that the top 10 most popular hedge fund stocks returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 17.2% in 2021 through June 11th but managed to beat the market again by 3.3 percentage points. Unfortunately BFC wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was very bearish); BFC investors were disappointed as the stock returned -4.8% since the end of the first quarter (through 6/11) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
