Hedge fund managers like David Einhorn, Dan Loeb, or Carl Icahn became billionaires through reaping large profits for their investors, which is why piggybacking their stock picks may provide us with significant returns as well. Many hedge funds, like Paul Singer’s Elliott Management, are pretty secretive, but we can still get some insights by analyzing their quarterly 13F filings. One of the most fertile grounds for large abnormal returns is hedge funds’ most popular small-cap picks, which are not so widely followed and often trade at a discount to their intrinsic value. In this article we will check out hedge fund activity in another small-cap stock: Eastman Chemical Company (NYSE:EMN).
Eastman Chemical Company (NYSE:EMN) shares haven’t seen a lot of action during the fourth quarter. Overall, hedge fund sentiment was unchanged. The stock was in 39 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. 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 Enbridge Energy Partners, L.P. (NYSE:EEP), First Republic Bank (NYSE:FRC), and ONEOK, Inc. (NYSE:OKE) to gather more data points.
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Now, we’re going to take a glance at the new action surrounding Eastman Chemical Company (NYSE:EMN).
Hedge fund activity in Eastman Chemical Company (NYSE:EMN)
Heading into the fourth quarter of 2016, a total of 39 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, unchanged from the previous quarter. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists a few noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).
According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Alexander Roepers’s Atlantic Investment Management has the number one position in Eastman Chemical Company (NYSE:EMN), worth close to $132.2 million, amounting to 17.3% of its total 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Iridian Asset Management, run by David Cohen and Harold Levy, which holds a $112.3 million position; 1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Other hedge funds and institutional investors with similar optimism contain Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and Ric Dillon’s Diamond Hill Capital.
