Is Mizuho Financial Group Inc. (ADR) (MFG) A Good Stock To Invest In?

While the market driven by short-term sentiment influenced by uncertainty regarding the future of the interest rate environment in the US, the low commodity prices and the economic turmoil in China, many smart money investors are keeping their optimism regarding the current bull run, while still hedging many of their long positions. However, as we know, big investors usually buy stocks with strong fundamentals, which is why we believe we can profit from imitating them. In this article, we are going to take a look at the smart money sentiment surrounding Mizuho Financial Group Inc. (ADR) (NYSE:MFG).

Mizuho Financial Group investors should be aware of a decrease in support from the world’s most elite money managers in recent months, as the number of funds with long positions slid to six from eight in the third quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare MFG to other stocks including salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM), PNC Financial Services (NYSE:PNC), and Canadian National Railway (USA) (NYSE:CNI) to get a better sense of its popularity.

According to most shareholders, hedge funds are viewed as worthless, outdated financial tools of the past. While there are more than 8000 funds in operation today, we choose to focus on the crème de la crème of this club, about 700 funds. These investment experts orchestrate the majority of the smart money’s total capital, and by shadowing their highest performing investments, Insider Monkey has spotted several investment strategies that have historically outpaced the S&P 500 index. Insider Monkey’s small-cap hedge fund strategy defeated the S&P 500 index by 12 percentage points annually for a decade in their back tests.

With all of this in mind, we’re going to take a gander at the fresh action regarding Mizuho Financial Group Inc. (ADR) (NYSE:MFG).

How are hedge funds trading Mizuho Financial Group Inc. (ADR) (NYSE:MFG)?

At Q3’s end, a total of 6 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of -25% from the second quarter. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies has the most valuable position in Mizuho Financial Group Inc. (ADR) (NYSE:MFG), worth close to $8.3 million, comprising less than 0.1%% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Louis Bacon of Moore Global Investments, with a $2.4 million position; the fund has 0.1% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other members of the smart money with similar optimism comprise D. E. Shaw, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management and David Dreman’s Dreman Value Management.