Is FORR A Good Stock To Buy Now?

Our extensive research has shown that imitating the smart money can generate significant returns for retail investors, which is why we track nearly 817 active prominent money managers and analyze their quarterly 13F filings. The stocks that are heavily bought by hedge funds historically outperformed the market, though there is no shortage of high profile failures like hedge funds’ 2018 losses in Facebook and Apple. Let’s take a closer look at what the funds we track think about Forrester Research, Inc. (NASDAQ:FORR) in this article.

Is FORR a good stock to buy now? Forrester Research, Inc. (NASDAQ:FORR) shareholders have witnessed an increase in hedge fund interest of late. Forrester Research, Inc. (NASDAQ:FORR) was in 8 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistics is 13. Our calculations also showed that FORR 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To most stock holders, hedge funds are viewed as underperforming, outdated financial tools of the past. While there are over 8000 funds trading today, Our researchers choose to focus on the crème de la crème of this group, around 850 funds. It is estimated that this group of investors preside over the majority of the hedge fund industry’s total capital, and by monitoring their first-class picks, Insider Monkey has uncovered a number of investment strategies that have historically exceeded the market. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy outpaced the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points per year since its inception in March 2017. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 13% since February 2017 (through November 17th) even though the market was up 65% during the same period. We just shared a list of 6 short targets in our latest quarterly update .

Chuck Royce of Royce & Associates

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 5 best cheap stocks to buy according to Ray Dalio to identify stocks with upside potential. 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 check out the fresh hedge fund action regarding Forrester Research, Inc. (NASDAQ:FORR).

Hedge fund activity in Forrester Research, Inc. (NASDAQ:FORR)

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 8 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 14% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards FORR over the last 21 quarters. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

More specifically, Royce & Associates was the largest shareholder of Forrester Research, Inc. (NASDAQ:FORR), with a stake worth $37.4 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Royce & Associates was Renaissance Technologies, which amassed a stake valued at $30.4 million. GLG Partners, Citadel Investment Group, and Arrowstreet Capital were also very fond of the stock, becoming one of the largest hedge fund holders of the company. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Royce & Associates allocated the biggest weight to Forrester Research, Inc. (NASDAQ:FORR), around 0.4% of its 13F portfolio. Renaissance Technologies is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.03 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to FORR.

As one would reasonably expect, key money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Arrowstreet Capital, managed by Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell, assembled the largest position in Forrester Research, Inc. (NASDAQ:FORR). Arrowstreet Capital had $0.8 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. David Harding’s Winton Capital Management also initiated a $0.3 million position during the quarter.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Forrester Research, Inc. (NASDAQ:FORR) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Five Point Holdings, LLC (NYSE:FPH), Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Corporation (NASDAQ:GLDD), Tilray, Inc. (NASDAQ:TLRY), Saul Centers Inc (NYSE:BFS), ARMOUR Residential REIT, Inc. (NYSE:ARR), Ready Capital Corporation (NYSE:RC), and Inozyme Pharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:INZY). This group of stocks’ market valuations are closest to FORR’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 11.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $69 million. That figure was $73 million in FORR’s case. Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Corporation (NASDAQ:GLDD) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Tilray, Inc. (NASDAQ:TLRY) is the least popular one with only 6 bullish hedge fund positions. Forrester Research, Inc. (NASDAQ:FORR) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for FORR is 31.6. 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 31.6% in 2020 through December 2nd and still beat the market by 16 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on FORR as the stock returned 29.9% since the end of the third quarter (through 12/2) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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