Is CIGI A Good Stock To Buy Now?

The Insider Monkey team has completed processing the quarterly 13F filings for the September 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 Colliers International Group Inc (NASDAQ:CIGI).

Is CIGI a good stock to buy now? The best stock pickers were taking a pessimistic view. The number of bullish hedge fund bets retreated by 1 lately. Colliers International Group Inc (NASDAQ:CIGI) was in 10 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistics is 14. Our calculations also showed that CIGI 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.

So, why do we pay attention to hedge fund sentiment before making any investment decisions? Our research has shown that hedge funds’ small-cap stock picks managed to beat the market by double digits annually between 1999 and 2016, but the margin of outperformance has been declining in recent years. Nevertheless, we were still able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 66 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that underperformed the market by 10 percentage points annually between 2006 and 2017. Interestingly the margin of underperformance of these stocks has been increasing in recent years. Investors who are long the market and short these stocks would have returned more than 27% annually between 2015 and 2017. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 in our quarterly newsletter. Even if you aren’t comfortable with shorting stocks, you should at least avoid initiating long positions in stocks that are in our short portfolio.

Peter Rathjens of Arrowstreet 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. Now we’re going to take a look at the key hedge fund action encompassing Colliers International Group Inc (NASDAQ:CIGI).

Do Hedge Funds Think CIGI 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 -9% from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards CIGI over the last 21 quarters. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in Colliers International Group Inc (NASDAQ:CIGI) was held by Spruce House Investment Management, which reported holding $381.1 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by BloombergSen with a $131.6 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Renaissance Technologies, Arrowstreet Capital, and Royce & Associates. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position BloombergSen allocated the biggest weight to Colliers International Group Inc (NASDAQ:CIGI), around 9.54% of its 13F portfolio. Spruce House Investment Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 2.06 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CIGI.

Since Colliers International Group Inc (NASDAQ:CIGI) has witnessed bearish sentiment from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s safe to say that there lies a certain “tier” of fund managers who were dropping their positions entirely last quarter. At the top of the heap, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group cut the biggest stake of the “upper crust” of funds monitored by Insider Monkey, valued at an estimated $0.9 million in stock, and Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital was right behind this move, as the fund sold off about $0.2 million worth. These transactions are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 1 funds last quarter.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Colliers International Group Inc (NASDAQ:CIGI) but similarly valued. We will take a look at W.R. Grace & Co. (NYSE:GRA), Shake Shack Inc (NYSE:SHAK), Cohen & Steers, Inc. (NYSE:CNS), Workiva Inc (NYSE:WK), Corporate Office Properties Trust (NYSE:OFC), Workhorse Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:WKHS), and Evercore Inc. (NYSE:EVR). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to CIGI’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 24 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $332 million. That figure was $595 million in CIGI’s case. W.R. Grace & Co. (NYSE:GRA) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Workhorse Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:WKHS) is the least popular one with only 13 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Colliers International Group Inc (NASDAQ:CIGI) is even less popular than WKHS. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CIGI is 25.4. 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. Hedge funds clearly dropped the ball on CIGI as the stock delivered strong returns, though hedge funds’ consensus picks still generated respectable returns. 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. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on CIGI as the stock returned 36.2% since Q3 (through December 8th) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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