Is Fortinet Inc (NASDAQ:FTNT) a good investment right now? We check hedge fund and billionaire investor sentiment before delving into hours of research. Hedge funds spend millions of dollars on Ivy League graduates, expert networks, and get tips from industry insiders. They fail miserably sometimes but historically their consensus stock picks outperformed the market after adjusting for known risk factors.
Fortinet Inc (NASDAQ:FTNT) investors should be aware of a decrease in support from the world’s most elite money managers of late. The number of long bullish hedge fund positions that are disclosed in 13F filings declined from 26 at the end of June to 25 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 athenahealth, Inc (NASDAQ:ATHN), Pinnacle Foods Inc (NYSE:PF), and Carter’s, Inc. (NYSE:CRI) to gather more data points.
Follow Fortinet Inc. (NASDAQ:FTNT)
Follow Fortinet Inc. (NASDAQ:FTNT)
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.
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Now, we’re going to take a look at the key action surrounding Fortinet Inc (NASDAQ:FTNT).
What does the smart money think about Fortinet Inc (NASDAQ:FTNT)?
Heading into the fourth quarter of 2016, a total of 25 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -4% from the second quarter of 2016. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).
When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Citadel Investment Group, managed by Ken Griffin, holds the number one position in Fortinet Inc (NASDAQ:FTNT). Citadel Investment Group has a $149.6 million position in the stock, comprising 0.2% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Eminence Capital, led by Ricky Sandler, holding a $78.1 million position; the fund has 1.3% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other hedge funds and institutional investors with similar optimism include Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management and Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management.
