Is LPL A Good Stock To Buy Now?

The Insider Monkey team has completed processing the quarterly 13F filings for the September quarter submitted by the hedge funds and other money managers included in our extensive database. Most hedge fund investors experienced strong gains on the back of a strong market performance, which certainly propelled them to adjust their equity holdings so as to maintain the desired risk profile. As a result, the relevancy of these public filings and their content is indisputable, as they may reveal numerous high-potential stocks. The following article will discuss the smart money sentiment towards LG Display Co Ltd. (NYSE:LPL).

Is LPL a good stock to buy now? LG Display Co Ltd. (NYSE:LPL) was in 7 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistics is 15. LPL investors should be aware of an increase in hedge fund interest recently. There were 5 hedge funds in our database with LPL positions at the end of the second quarter. Our calculations also showed that LPL 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).

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

Today there are many signals shareholders put to use to analyze their holdings. A pair of the best signals are hedge fund and insider trading activity. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the elite hedge fund managers can outperform their index-focused peers by a solid amount (see the details here).

Ian Wace of Marshall Wace

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. With all of this in mind we’re going to view the latest hedge fund action surrounding LG Display Co Ltd. (NYSE:LPL).

What does smart money think about LG Display Co Ltd. (NYSE:LPL)?

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 7 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 40% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards LPL over the last 21 quarters. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a few noteworthy hedge fund managers who were adding to their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in LG Display Co Ltd. (NYSE:LPL) was held by Millennium Management, which reported holding $17.6 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Arrowstreet Capital with a $8.5 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Marshall Wace LLP, Citadel Investment Group, and Two Sigma Advisors. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Marshall Wace LLP allocated the biggest weight to LG Display Co Ltd. (NYSE:LPL), around 0.03% of its 13F portfolio. Millennium Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.02 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to LPL.

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, specific money managers have been driving this bullishness. Two Sigma Advisors, managed by John Overdeck and David Siegel, created the biggest position in LG Display Co Ltd. (NYSE:LPL). Two Sigma Advisors had $0.4 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital also made a $0.1 million investment in the stock during the quarter.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to LG Display Co Ltd. (NYSE:LPL). These stocks are Jefferies Financial Group Inc. (NYSE:JEF), Brunswick Corporation (NYSE:BC), Owl Rock Capital Corporation (NYSE:ORCC), East West Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:EWBC), BRP Inc. (NASDAQ:DOOO), AutoNation, Inc. (NYSE:AN), and Tempur Sealy International Inc. (NYSE:TPX). This group of stocks’ market values resemble LPL’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 27.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $482 million. That figure was $33 million in LPL’s case. Tempur Sealy International Inc. (NYSE:TPX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand BRP Inc. (NASDAQ:DOOO) is the least popular one with only 12 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks LG Display Co Ltd. (NYSE:LPL) is even less popular than DOOO. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for LPL is 21. 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. Hedge funds dodged a bullet by taking a bearish stance towards LPL. Our calculations showed that the top 20 most popular hedge fund stocks 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 but managed to beat the market again by 16 percentage points. Unfortunately LPL wasn’t nearly as popular as these 20 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was very bearish); LPL investors were disappointed as the stock returned 9.5% since the end of the third quarter (through 12/2) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market so far in 2020.

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