Is CE Stock A Buy or Sell?

Our extensive research has shown that imitating the smart money can generate significant returns for retail investors, which is why we track nearly 900 active prominent money managers and analyze their quarterly 13F filings. The stocks that are heavily bought by hedge funds historically outperformed the market, though there is no shortage of high profile failures like hedge funds’ 2018 losses in Facebook and Apple. Let’s take a closer look at what the funds we track think about Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE) in this article.

Is CE stock a buy or sell? The best stock pickers were in an optimistic mood. The number of long hedge fund bets increased by 7 lately. Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE) was in 33 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistic is 33. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that CE isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q4 rankings). There were 26 hedge funds in our database with CE holdings at the end of September.

Thomas Claugus of GMT Capital

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

At fourth quarter’s end, a total of 33 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 27% from the third quarter of 2020. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in CE over the last 22 quarters. So, let’s check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

More specifically, Lyrical Asset Management was the largest shareholder of Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE), with a stake worth $349.7 million reported as of the end of December. Trailing Lyrical Asset Management was GMT Capital, which amassed a stake valued at $213.1 million. Holocene Advisors, Millennium Management, and Balyasny Asset Management 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 GMT Capital allocated the biggest weight to Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE), around 15.19% of its 13F portfolio. Lyrical Asset Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 4.83 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CE.

As industrywide interest jumped, key hedge funds were leading the bulls’ herd. Balyasny Asset Management, managed by Dmitry Balyasny, assembled the most outsized position in Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE). Balyasny Asset Management had $54.6 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management also made a $24.6 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Ian Simm’s Impax Asset Management, Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital, and Andrew Byington’s Appian Way Asset Management.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE) but similarly valued. We will take a look at NVR, Inc. (NYSE:NVR), Cheniere Energy, Inc. (NYSE:LNG), Domino’s Pizza, Inc. (NYSE:DPZ), Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALNY), Suzano S.A. (NYSE:SUZ), IDEX Corporation (NYSE:IEX), and Extra Space Storage, Inc. (NYSE:EXR). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to CE’s market value.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 32 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $968 million. That figure was $997 million in CE’s case. NVR, Inc. (NYSE:NVR) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Suzano S.A. (NYSE:SUZ) is the least popular one with only 6 bullish hedge fund positions. Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CE is 73.8. 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 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 81.2% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 26 percentage points. These stocks gained 7.9% in 2021 through April 1st and still beat the market by 0.4 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on CE as the stock returned 17.5% since the end of Q4 (through 4/1) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.

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