Is CEIX A Good Stock To Buy Now?

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. We at Insider Monkey have plowed through 817 13F filings that hedge funds and well-known value investors are required to file by the SEC. The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of September 30th, about a month before the elections. In this article we look at what those investors think of CONSOL Energy Inc. (NYSE:CEIX).

Is CEIX a good stock to buy now? CONSOL Energy Inc. (NYSE:CEIX) shareholders have witnessed a decrease in support from the world’s most elite money managers recently. CONSOL Energy Inc. (NYSE:CEIX) was in 10 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistics is 25. Our calculations also showed that CEIX 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).

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

To the average investor there are dozens of tools shareholders put to use to grade stocks. Some of the less known tools are hedge fund and insider trading activity. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the top fund managers can outclass the market by a healthy margin (see the details here).

Phillip Gross of Adage Capital

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. With all of this in mind we’re going to take a look at the fresh hedge fund action encompassing CONSOL Energy Inc. (NYSE:CEIX).

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

At Q3’s end, a total of 10 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -23% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 20 hedge funds with a bullish position in CEIX a year ago. So, let’s find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

The largest stake in CONSOL Energy Inc. (NYSE:CEIX) was held by Mountain Lake Investment Management, which reported holding $3.5 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by D E Shaw with a $1.7 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Adage Capital Management, Arrowstreet Capital, and Winton Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Mountain Lake Investment Management allocated the biggest weight to CONSOL Energy Inc. (NYSE:CEIX), around 2.4% of its 13F portfolio. Voss Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.04 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CEIX.

Since CONSOL Energy Inc. (NYSE:CEIX) has experienced bearish sentiment from the aggregate hedge fund industry, it’s safe to say that there is a sect of fund managers that elected to cut their positions entirely last quarter. Interestingly, Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management sold off the largest position of all the hedgies tracked by Insider Monkey, totaling close to $0.2 million in stock, and Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital was right behind this move, as the fund said goodbye to about $0.1 million worth. These transactions are interesting, as total hedge fund interest was cut by 3 funds last quarter.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as CONSOL Energy Inc. (NYSE:CEIX) but similarly valued. These stocks are Civeo Corporation (NYSE:CVEO), Esquire Financial Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:ESQ), Lumos Pharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:LUMO), Babcock & Wilcox Enterprises Inc (NYSE:BW), Safeguard Scientifics, Inc (NYSE:SFE), Natural Gas Services Group, Inc. (NYSE:NGS), and Mistras Group, Inc. (NYSE:MG). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to CEIX’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 7.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $17 million. That figure was $10 million in CEIX’s case. Civeo Corporation (NYSE:CVEO) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Esquire Financial Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:ESQ) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. CONSOL Energy Inc. (NYSE:CEIX) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CEIX is 51.5. 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 CEIX as the stock returned 37.9% 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.