The market has been volatile due to elections and the potential of another Federal Reserve rate increase. Small cap stocks have been on a tear, as the Russell 2000 ETF (IWM) has outperformed the larger S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by more than 10 percentage points since the end of June. SEC filings and hedge fund investor letters indicate that the smart money seems to be getting back in stocks, and the funds’ movements is one of the reasons why small-cap stocks are red hot. In this article, we analyze what the smart money thinks of Global Payments Inc (NYSE:GPN) and find out how it is affected by hedge funds’ moves.
Is Global Payments Inc (NYSE:GPN) a cheap investment today? Prominent investors are undoubtedly actually turning less bullish. The number of long hedge fund bets fell by 10 lately. GPN was in 20 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. There were 30 hedge funds in our database with GPN positions at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare GPN to other stocks including Quest Diagnostics Inc (NYSE:DGX), CMS Energy Corporation (NYSE:CMS), and Cintas Corporation (NASDAQ:CTAS) to get a better sense of its popularity.
Follow Global Payments Inc (NYSE:GPN)
Follow Global Payments Inc (NYSE:GPN)
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What does the smart money think about Global Payments Inc (NYSE:GPN)?
At the end of the third quarter, a total of 20 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a drop of 33% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards GPN over the last 5 quarters. So, let’s examine which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Citadel Investment Group, led by Ken Griffin, holds the number one position in Global Payments Inc (NYSE:GPN). Citadel Investment Group has a $107.2 million position in the stock. On Citadel Investment Group’s heels is Alkeon Capital Management, led by Panayotis Takis Sparaggis, holding a $79 million position; the fund has 1.5% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining members of the smart money that are bullish consist of Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies, Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson’s Adage Capital Management and Cliff Asness’ AQR Capital Management. We should note that none of these hedge funds are 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.
