Is KNL A Good Stock To Buy Now?

Insider Monkey has processed numerous 13F filings of hedge funds and successful value investors to create an extensive database of hedge fund holdings. The 13F filings show the hedge funds’ and successful investors’ positions as of the end of the third quarter. You can find articles about an individual hedge fund’s trades on numerous financial news websites. However, in this article we will take a look at their collective moves over the last 5 years and analyze what the smart money thinks of Knoll Inc (NYSE:KNL) based on that data.

Is KNL a good stock to buy now? Knoll Inc (NYSE:KNL) shares haven’t seen a lot of action during the second quarter. Overall, hedge fund sentiment was unchanged. The stock was in 7 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. Our calculations also showed that KNL isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks). At the end of this article we will also compare KNL to other stocks including Glatfelter Corporation (NYSE:GLT), Goldman Sachs BDC, Inc. (NYSE:GSBD), and Autolus Therapeutics plc (NASDAQ:AUTL) to get a better sense of its popularity.

Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

In the financial world there are a large number of tools investors have at their disposal to grade stocks. A pair of the most under-the-radar tools are hedge fund and insider trading indicators. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best fund managers can outperform the broader indices by a solid amount. Insider Monkey’s monthly stock picks returned 113% since March 2017 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 66 percentage points. Our short strategy outperformed the S&P 500 short ETFs by 20 percentage points annually (see the details here). That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is a useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

Dmitry Balyasny of Balyasny Asset Management

At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost real estate prices. So, we recommended this real estate stock to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 5 best cheap stocks to buy according to Ray Dalio to identify stocks with 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. Now we’re going to take a gander at the latest hedge fund action regarding Knoll Inc (NYSE:KNL).

How have hedgies been trading Knoll Inc (NYSE:KNL)?

At third quarter’s end, a total of 7 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 0% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards KNL over the last 21 quarters. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

The largest stake in Knoll Inc (NYSE:KNL) was held by D E Shaw, which reported holding $2.5 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Two Sigma Advisors with a $0.7 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included ExodusPoint Capital, Balyasny Asset Management, and AQR Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position ExodusPoint Capital allocated the biggest weight to Knoll Inc (NYSE:KNL), around 0.01% of its 13F portfolio. Paloma Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 0.0046 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to KNL.

Since Knoll Inc (NYSE:KNL) has witnessed falling interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, logic holds that there exists a select few hedge funds that decided to sell off their positions entirely last quarter. At the top of the heap, Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital dropped the largest position of all the hedgies watched by Insider Monkey, totaling an estimated $2.9 million in stock, and Bruce Kovner’s Caxton Associates LP was right behind this move, as the fund said goodbye to about $0.2 million worth. These moves are intriguing to say the least, as aggregate hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Knoll Inc (NYSE:KNL) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Glatfelter Corporation (NYSE:GLT), Goldman Sachs BDC, Inc. (NYSE:GSBD), Autolus Therapeutics plc (NASDAQ:AUTL), First Bancorp (NASDAQ:FBNC), BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:BCRX), Zynex, Inc. (NASDAQ:ZYXI), and Quanex Building Products Corporation (NYSE:NX). This group of stocks’ market valuations are closest to KNL’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 12 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $42 million. That figure was $5 million in KNL’s case. BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:BCRX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Goldman Sachs BDC, Inc. (NYSE:GSBD) is the least popular one with only 2 bullish hedge fund positions. Knoll Inc (NYSE:KNL) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for KNL is 27. 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 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.3% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10 percentage points. These stocks gained 31.6% in 2020 through December 2nd and still beat the market by 16 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on KNL as the stock returned 18.3% since the end of the third quarter (through 12/2) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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