Is BRT Apartments Corp (BRT) A Good Stock To Buy?

The Insider Monkey team has completed processing the quarterly 13F filings for the March quarter submitted by the hedge funds and other money managers included in our extensive database. Most hedge fund investors experienced strong gains on the back of a strong market performance, which certainly propelled them to adjust their equity holdings so as to maintain the desired risk profile. As a result, the relevancy of these public filings and their content is indisputable, as they may reveal numerous high-potential stocks. The following article will discuss the smart money sentiment towards BRT Apartments Corp (NYSE:BRT).

Is BRT a good stock to buy? The smart money was in a bearish mood. The number of long hedge fund bets were trimmed by 1 recently. BRT Apartments Corp (NYSE:BRT) was in 3 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic is 7. Our calculations also showed that BRT isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings). There were 4 hedge funds in our database with BRT holdings at the end of December.

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 115 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is an extremely useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

Michael Price of MFP Investors

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, an activist hedge fund wants to buy this $26 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. Now we’re going to go over the new hedge fund action encompassing BRT Apartments Corp (NYSE:BRT).

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

Heading into the second quarter of 2021, a total of 3 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -25% from the fourth quarter of 2020. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards BRT over the last 23 quarters. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

More specifically, Renaissance Technologies was the largest shareholder of BRT Apartments Corp (NYSE:BRT), with a stake worth $11.3 million reported as of the end of March. Trailing Renaissance Technologies was MFP Investors, which amassed a stake valued at $0.7 million. Citadel Investment Group was 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 MFP Investors allocated the biggest weight to BRT Apartments Corp (NYSE:BRT), around 0.09% of its 13F portfolio. Renaissance Technologies is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.01 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to BRT.

Because BRT Apartments Corp (NYSE:BRT) has faced a decline in interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s safe to say that there exists a select few fund managers that elected to cut their positions entirely by the end of the first quarter. Intriguingly, David Harding’s Winton Capital Management dropped the biggest position of the 750 funds watched by Insider Monkey, comprising close to $0.2 million in stock. Roger Ibbotson’s fund, Zebra Capital Management, also dropped its stock, about $0.2 million worth. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as total hedge fund interest was cut by 1 funds by the end of the first quarter.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to BRT Apartments Corp (NYSE:BRT). We will take a look at Nisun International Enterprise Development Group Co., Ltd (NASDAQ:NISN), Tiptree Inc. (NASDAQ:TIPT), Orphazyme A/S (NASDAQ:ORPH), Precision Drilling Corp (NYSE:PDS), RR Donnelley & Sons Company (NYSE:RRD), Escalade, Inc. (NASDAQ:ESCA), and Bluegreen Vacations Holding Corporation (NYSE:BVH). All of these stocks’ market caps match BRT’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 6.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $20 million. That figure was $12 million in BRT’s case. RR Donnelley & Sons Company (NYSE:RRD) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Nisun International Enterprise Development Group Co., Ltd (NASDAQ:NISN) is the least popular one with only 2 bullish hedge fund positions. BRT Apartments Corp (NYSE:BRT) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for BRT is 19.2. 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. This is a slightly negative signal and we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. Our calculations showed that top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds 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 and surpassed the market again by 3.3 percentage points. Unfortunately BRT wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); BRT investors were disappointed as the stock returned 4.1% since the end of March (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 in 2021.

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