Is Connecticut Water Service Inc (CTWS) A Good Stock To Buy?

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 funds have been producing disappointing net returns in recent years, however that was partly due to the poor performance of small-cap stocks in general. Well, small-cap stocks finally turned the corner and have been beating the large-cap stocks by more than 10 percentage points over the last 5 months. This means the relevancy of hedge funds’ public filings became inarguable, as they may reveal numerous high-potential stocks. The following article will discuss the smart money sentiment towards Connecticut Water Service Inc (NASDAQ:CTWS).

Connecticut Water Service Inc (NASDAQ:CTWS) investors should be aware of an increase in hedge fund sentiment of late. There were 5 hedge funds in our database with CTWS holdings at the end of the second quarter, which rose to 6 by the end of the third quarter. The level and the change in hedge fund popularity aren’t the only variables you need to analyze to decipher hedge funds’ perspectives. A stock may witness a boost in popularity but it may still be less popular than similarly priced stocks. That’s why at the end of this article we will examine companies such as REX American Resources Corp (NYSE:REX), Pace Holdings Corp (NASDAQ:PACE), and Vera Bradley, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRA) to gather more data points.

We follow over 700 hedge funds and other institutional investors and by analyzing their quarterly 13F filings, we identify stocks that they are collectively bullish on and develop investment strategies based on this data. One strategy that outperformed the market over the last year involves selecting the 100 best-performing funds and identifying the 30 mid-cap stocks that they are collectively most bullish on. Over the past year, this strategy generated returns of 18%, topping the 8% gain registered by S&P 500 ETFs. We launched this strategy 2.5 years ago and it returned more than 39% since then, vs. 22% gain registered by the S&P 500 ETFs.

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What have hedge funds been doing with Connecticut Water Service Inc (NASDAQ:CTWS)?

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 6 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a 20% increase from one quarter earlier, pushing hedge fund ownership to a yearly high. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish positions in CTWS over the last 5 quarters. So, let’s find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Renaissance Technologies, one of the largest hedge funds in the world, holds the number one position in Connecticut Water Service Inc (NASDAQ:CTWS). Renaissance Technologies has an $11.7 million position in the stock. The second most bullish fund manager is AQR Capital Management, led by Cliff Asness, which holds a $1.5 million position. Other hedge funds and institutional investors with similar optimism consist of John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors, Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital, and Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management. We should note that none of these hedge funds are among our list of the 100 best performing hedge funds, which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-micro-cap stocks.