Reputable billionaire investors such as Nelson Peltz and David Tepper generate exorbitant profits for their wealthy accredited investors (a minimum of $1 million in investable assets would be required to invest in a hedge fund and most successful hedge funds won’t accept your savings unless you commit at least $5 million) by pinpointing winning small-cap stocks. There is little or no publicly-available information at all on some of these small companies, which makes it hard for an individual investor to pin down a winner within the small-cap space. However, hedge funds and other big asset managers can do the due diligence and analysis for you instead, thanks to their highly-skilled research teams and vast resources to conduct an appropriate evaluation process. Looking for potential winners within the small-cap galaxy of stocks? We believe following the smart money is a good starting point.
Hedge fund interest in First Citizens BancShares Inc. (NASDAQ:FCNCA) shares was flat at the end of last quarter, with 11 hedge fund holding at the end of September. This is usually a negative indicator. At the end of this article we will also compare FCNCA to other stocks including Telecom Argentina S.A. (ADR) (NYSE:TEO), Webster Financial Corporation (NYSE:WBS), and Tallgrass Energy Partners LP(NYSE:TEP) to get a better sense of its popularity.
Follow First Citizens Bancshares Inc (NASDAQ:FCNCA)
Follow First Citizens Bancshares Inc (NASDAQ:FCNCA)
At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 18% gains over the past 12 months, more than doubling the 8% returns enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs.
Kevin George/Shutterstock.com
What does the smart money think about First Citizens BancShares Inc. (NASDAQ:FCNCA)?
At Q3’s end, a total of 11 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, unchanged from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 12 hedge funds with a bullish position in FCNCA at the beginning of this year. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).
When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates has the number one position in First Citizens BancShares Inc. (NASDAQ:FCNCA), worth close to $61 million. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Joe Huber of Huber Capital Management, with a $43.1 million position; 1.7% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Other hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish encompass Paul J. Isaac’s Arbiter Partners Capital Management, Cliff Asness’ AQR Capital Management and Matthew Lindenbaum’s Basswood Capital. We should note that Arbiter Partners Capital Management is among our list of the 100 best performing hedge funds which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-microcap stocks.
