Hedge Funds and other institutional investors have just completed filing their 13Fs with the Securities and Exchange Commission, revealing their equity portfolios as of the end of September. At Insider Monkey, we follow nearly 900 active hedge funds and notable investors and by analyzing their 13F filings, we can determine the stocks that they are collectively bullish on. One of their picks is Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS), so let’s take a closer look at the sentiment that surrounds it in the current quarter.
Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS) has experienced an increase in hedge fund interest of late. Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS) was in 77 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic is 78. There were 76 hedge funds in our database with GS holdings at the end of December. Our calculations also showed that GS isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).
According to most market participants, hedge funds are perceived as underperforming, old financial tools of yesteryear. While there are over 8000 funds with their doors open today, We choose to focus on the moguls of this club, approximately 850 funds. It is estimated that this group of investors preside over the lion’s share of the hedge fund industry’s total asset base, and by monitoring their top investments, Insider Monkey has discovered many investment strategies that have historically outperformed the S&P 500 index. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy defeated the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points per year since its inception in March 2017. Also, our monthly newsletter’s portfolio of long stock picks returned 206.8% since March 2017 (through May 2021) and beat the S&P 500 Index by more than 115 percentage points. You can download a sample issue of this newsletter on our website .
Boykin Curry of Eagle Capital
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Do Hedge Funds Think GS Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At first quarter’s end, a total of 77 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 1% from the fourth quarter of 2020. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards GS over the last 23 quarters. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).
The largest stake in Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS) was held by Eagle Capital Management, which reported holding $1563.4 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Greenhaven Associates with a $872.1 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Fisher Asset Management, Citadel Investment Group, and Millennium Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Greenhaven Associates allocated the biggest weight to Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS), around 19.71% of its 13F portfolio. Truvvo Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 5.6 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to GS.
As one would reasonably expect, key hedge funds have been driving this bullishness. Crake Asset Management, managed by Martin Taylor, assembled the most outsized position in Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS). Crake Asset Management had $51.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Rob Citrone’s Discovery Capital Management also initiated a $17.9 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new GS investors: Kenneth Tropin’s Graham Capital Management, Kenneth Tropin’s Graham Capital Management, and Greg Eisner’s Engineers Gate Manager.
Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS) but similarly valued. We will take a look at 3M Company (NYSE:MMM), American Tower Corporation (NYSE:AMT), The Estee Lauder Companies Inc (NYSE:EL), Intuit Inc. (NASDAQ:INTU), Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE:LMT), Square, Inc. (NYSE:SQ), and Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:UBER). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to GS’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMM | 41 | 1519815 | -3 |
| AMT | 58 | 4593727 | -3 |
| EL | 59 | 4103128 | 8 |
| INTU | 68 | 4707761 | 0 |
| LMT | 50 | 2295448 | -3 |
| SQ | 92 | 9202246 | 3 |
| UBER | 130 | 10532866 | -5 |
| Average | 71.1 | 5279284 | -0.4 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 71.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $5279 million. That figure was $5057 million in GS’s case. Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:UBER) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand 3M Company (NYSE:MMM) is the least popular one with only 41 bullish hedge fund positions. Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for GS is 55.8. 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 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 17.2% in 2021 through June 11th and still beat the market by 3.3 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on GS as the stock returned 16% since the end of Q1 (through 6/11) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
