Is JBHT Stock A Buy or Sell?

Is J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:JBHT) a good place to invest some of your money right now? We can gain invaluable insight to help us answer that question by studying the investment trends of top investors, who employ world-class Ivy League graduates, who are given immense resources and industry contacts to put their financial expertise to work. The top picks of these firms have historically outperformed the market when we account for known risk factors, making them very valuable investment ideas.

Is JBHT stock a buy? The best stock pickers were becoming less confident. The number of long hedge fund bets shrunk by 12 recently. J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:JBHT) was in 26 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistic is 38. Our calculations also showed that JBHT isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q4 rankings). There were 38 hedge funds in our database with JBHT holdings at the end of September.

Dmitry Balyasny of Balyasny Asset Management

At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, the CBD market is growing at a 33% annualized rate, so we are taking a closer look at this under-the-radar hemp stock. We go through lists like the 10 best biotech stocks under $10 to identify the next stock with 10x 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. Keeping this in mind we’re going to take a gander at the latest hedge fund action regarding J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:JBHT).

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

Heading into the first quarter of 2021, a total of 26 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -32% from the third quarter of 2020. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in JBHT over the last 22 quarters. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

More specifically, Balyasny Asset Management was the largest shareholder of J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:JBHT), with a stake worth $76.2 million reported as of the end of December. Trailing Balyasny Asset Management was Park Presidio Capital, which amassed a stake valued at $60.1 million. AQR Capital Management, Holocene Advisors, and Scopus Asset Management 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 Park Presidio Capital allocated the biggest weight to J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:JBHT), around 6.47% of its 13F portfolio. Running Oak Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 1.65 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to JBHT.

Since J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:JBHT) has faced falling interest from the smart money, logic holds that there were a few hedgies who were dropping their full holdings last quarter. Intriguingly, Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital dumped the largest stake of the “upper crust” of funds watched by Insider Monkey, totaling an estimated $20.8 million in stock. Renaissance Technologies, also cut its stock, about $13.6 million worth. These transactions are intriguing to say the least, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 12 funds last quarter.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:JBHT). We will take a look at CureVac N.V. (NASDAQ:CVAC), Masco Corporation (NYSE:MAS), Gartner Inc (NYSE:IT), Generac Holdings Inc. (NYSE:GNRC), Markel Corporation (NYSE:MKL), Tradeweb Markets Inc. (NASDAQ:TW), and Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. (NYSE:J). This group of stocks’ market caps are similar to JBHT’s market cap.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 30.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $792 million. That figure was $331 million in JBHT’s case. Masco Corporation (NYSE:MAS) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand CureVac N.V. (NASDAQ:CVAC) is the least popular one with only 9 bullish hedge fund positions. J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:JBHT) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for JBHT is 40.9. 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 12.3% in 2021 through April 19th and still beat the market by 0.9 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on JBHT as the stock returned 22.4% since the end of the fourth quarter (through 4/19) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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

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