Is BMTC 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 Bryn Mawr Bank Corp. (NASDAQ:BMTC).

Is BMTC a good stock to buy now? Prominent investors were becoming hopeful. The number of long hedge fund bets rose by 1 recently. Bryn Mawr Bank Corp. (NASDAQ:BMTC) was in 13 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 12. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that BMTC 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). There were 12 hedge funds in our database with BMTC holdings at the end of June.

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

According to most traders, hedge funds are seen as slow, old financial vehicles of the past. While there are more than 8000 funds trading at the moment, Our researchers choose to focus on the bigwigs of this group, around 850 funds. Most estimates calculate that this group of people handle the majority of all hedge funds’ total capital, and by watching their first-class picks, Insider Monkey has determined numerous investment strategies that have historically exceeded the market. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy exceeded the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points per year since its inception in March 2017. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 13% since February 2017 (through November 17th) even though the market was up 65% during the same period. We just shared a list of 6 short targets in our latest quarterly update .

Noam Gottesman of GLG Partners

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. Keeping this in mind let’s go over the key hedge fund action regarding Bryn Mawr Bank Corp. (NASDAQ:BMTC).

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

At third quarter’s end, a total of 13 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 8% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 11 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in BMTC a year ago. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Among these funds, Renaissance Technologies held the most valuable stake in Bryn Mawr Bank Corp. (NASDAQ:BMTC), which was worth $19.4 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was AltraVue Capital which amassed $3.4 million worth of shares. Arrowstreet Capital, GLG Partners, and Royce & Associates were also very fond of the stock, becoming one of the largest hedge fund holders of the company. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position AltraVue Capital allocated the biggest weight to Bryn Mawr Bank Corp. (NASDAQ:BMTC), around 1.99% of its 13F portfolio. Polaris Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.04 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to BMTC.

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, specific money managers have been driving this bullishness. Engineers Gate Manager, managed by Greg Eisner, assembled the biggest position in Bryn Mawr Bank Corp. (NASDAQ:BMTC). Engineers Gate Manager had $0.4 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Bryn Mawr Bank Corp. (NASDAQ:BMTC). We will take a look at Ichor Holdings Ltd. (NASDAQ:ICHR), MeiraGTx Holdings plc (NASDAQ:MGTX), ProSight Global, Inc. (NYSE:PROS), Enova International Inc (NYSE:ENVA), Clean Energy Fuels Corp (NASDAQ:CLNE), CEL-SCI Corporation (NYSE:CVM), and ADTRAN, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADTN). This group of stocks’ market values resemble BMTC’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 12.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $61 million. That figure was $32 million in BMTC’s case. Enova International Inc (NYSE:ENVA) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand CEL-SCI Corporation (NYSE:CVM) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. Bryn Mawr Bank Corp. (NASDAQ:BMTC) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for BMTC is 58.2. 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 BMTC as the stock returned 29.8% 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.