Is General Motors (GM) Stock A Buy Or Sell?

The 800+ hedge funds and famous money managers tracked by Insider Monkey have already compiled and submitted their 13F filings for the fourth quarter, which unveil their equity positions as of December 31st. We went through these filings, fixed typos and other more significant errors and identified the changes in hedge fund portfolios. Our extensive review of these public filings is finally over, so this article is set to reveal the smart money sentiment towards General Motors Company (NYSE:GM).

Is GM stock a buy or sell? General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) investors should be aware of an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers lately. General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) was in 70 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of December. The all time high for this statistic is 88. There were 60 hedge funds in our database with GM holdings at the end of September. Our calculations also showed that GM isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q4 rankings).

Today there are dozens of gauges stock traders employ to evaluate publicly traded companies. Two of the most underrated gauges are hedge fund and insider trading signals. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the top hedge fund managers can beat their index-focused peers by a healthy margin (see the details here).

William Harnisch of Peconic Partners LLC

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Do Hedge Funds Think GM Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?

At the end of the fourth quarter, a total of 70 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 17% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards GM over the last 22 quarters. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Among these funds, Berkshire Hathaway held the most valuable stake in General Motors Company (NYSE:GM), which was worth $3018.9 million at the end of the fourth quarter. On the second spot was Greenhaven Associates which amassed $765.7 million worth of shares. Eagle Capital Management, Arrowstreet Capital, and Diamond Hill 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 Greenhaven Associates allocated the biggest weight to General Motors Company (NYSE:GM), around 14.42% of its 13F portfolio. Pennant Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 9.41 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to GM.

As industrywide interest jumped, key money managers were breaking ground themselves. Renaissance Technologies, assembled the most outsized position in General Motors Company (NYSE:GM). Renaissance Technologies had $68.3 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. William Harnisch’s Peconic Partners LLC also made a $25.8 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new GM investors: Brandon Haley’s Holocene Advisors, Benjamin A. Smith’s Laurion Capital Management, and Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to General Motors Company (NYSE:GM). These stocks are Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc. (NYSE:MMC), VMware, Inc. (NYSE:VMW), Atlassian Corporation Plc (NASDAQ:TEAM), The Progressive Corporation (NYSE:PGR), Ferrari N.V. (NYSE:RACE), ABB Ltd (NYSE:ABB), and Workday Inc (NASDAQ:WDAY). This group of stocks’ market valuations match GM’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 44.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $2181 million. That figure was $6333 million in GM’s case. Workday Inc (NASDAQ:WDAY) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand ABB Ltd (NYSE:ABB) is the least popular one with only 8 bullish hedge fund positions. General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for GM is 76.9. 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 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 81.2% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 26 percentage points. These stocks gained 7% in 2021 through March 12th and still beat the market by 1.6 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on GM as the stock returned 42.3% since the end of Q4 (through 3/12) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.

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