The 700+ hedge funds and money managers tracked by Insider Monkey have already compiled and submitted their 13F filings for the third quarter, which unveil their equity positions as of September 30. We went through these filings, fixed typos and other more significant errors and identified the changes in hedge fund positions. Our extensive review of these public filings is finally over, so this article is set to reveal the smart money sentiment towards BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK).
Is BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK) ready to rally soon? The smart money is in an optimistic mood. The number of long hedge fund bets rose by 3 recently. At the end of this article we will also compare BLK to other stocks including The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE:DOW), HDFC Bank Limited (ADR) (NYSE:HDB), and BT Group plc (ADR) (NYSE:BT) to get a better sense of its popularity.
Follow Blackrock Inc. (NYSE:BLK)
Follow Blackrock Inc. (NYSE:BLK)
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.
Copyright: designer491 / 123RF Stock Photo
Now, let’s analyze the key action encompassing BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK).
What does the smart money think about BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK)?
At Q3’s end, a total of 30 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, up 11% from the second quarter of 2016. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).
According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson’s Adage Capital Management has the most valuable position in BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK), worth close to $77.3 million and corresponding to 0.2% of its total 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Markel Gayner Asset Management, led by Tom Gayner, holding a $56.4 million position; 1.5% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Remaining hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish consist of Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management and Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management.
As one would reasonably expect, some big names have jumped into BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK) headfirst. Citadel Investment Group, managed by Ken Griffin, established the most outsized position in BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK). The fund reportedly had $30 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Nick Niell’s Arrowgrass Capital Partners also made a $14.1 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are David Harding’s Winton Capital Management, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, and Israel Englander’s Millennium Management.
Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK). These stocks are The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE:DOW), HDFC Bank Limited (ADR) (NYSE:HDB), BT Group plc (ADR) (NYSE:BT), and Statoil ASA (ADR) (NYSE:STO). This group of stocks’ market values resemble BLK’s market value.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| DOW | 47 | 2686024 | -1 |
| HDB | 23 | 1442108 | 0 |
| BT | 7 | 114672 | -4 |
| STO | 10 | 85112 | 0 |
As you can see these stocks had an average of 22 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1.08 billion. That figure was a meager $397 million in BLK’s case. The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE:DOW) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand BT Group plc (ADR) (NYSE:BT) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK) 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 DOW might be a better candidate to consider a long position.
Disclosure: none.
