Is MYE A Good Stock To Buy Now?

In this article you are going to find out whether hedge funds think Myers Industries, Inc. (NYSE:MYE) is a good investment right now. We like to check what the smart money thinks first before doing extensive research on a given stock. Although there have been several high profile failed hedge fund picks, the consensus picks among hedge fund investors have historically outperformed the market after adjusting for known risk attributes. It’s not surprising given that hedge funds have access to better information and more resources to predict the winners in the stock market.

Is MYE a good stock to buy now? Myers Industries, Inc. (NYSE:MYE) investors should be aware of an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers lately. Myers Industries, Inc. (NYSE:MYE) was in 12 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistics is 14. There were 11 hedge funds in our database with MYE positions at the end of the second quarter. Our calculations also showed that MYE 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.

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.

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 15 best blue chip stocks to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. 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 let’s view the latest hedge fund action regarding Myers Industries, Inc. (NYSE:MYE).

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

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 12 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 9% from the second quarter of 2020. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in MYE 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.

According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, GAMCO Investors, managed by Mario Gabelli, holds the largest position in Myers Industries, Inc. (NYSE:MYE). GAMCO Investors has a $45.2 million position in the stock, comprising 0.5% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Renaissance Technologies,  which holds a $23.4 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining peers that hold long positions contain Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management and D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position GAMCO Investors allocated the biggest weight to Myers Industries, Inc. (NYSE:MYE), around 0.5% of its 13F portfolio. Renaissance Technologies is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.02 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to MYE.

Now, some big names have been driving this bullishness. ExodusPoint Capital, managed by Michael Gelband, assembled the largest position in Myers Industries, Inc. (NYSE:MYE). ExodusPoint Capital had $0.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Gavin Saitowitz and Cisco J. del Valle’s Prelude Capital (previously Springbok Capital) also made a $0 million investment in the stock during the quarter.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Myers Industries, Inc. (NYSE:MYE) but similarly valued. These stocks are Shoe Carnival, Inc. (NASDAQ:SCVL), Dynavax Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ:DVAX), HarborOne Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:HONE), Talos Energy, Inc. (NYSE:TALO), Ardelyx Inc (NASDAQ:ARDX), Navigator Holdings Ltd (NYSE:NVGS), and Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCO). All of these stocks’ market caps resemble MYE’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 18.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $69 million. That figure was $81 million in MYE’s case. Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCO) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Talos Energy, Inc. (NYSE:TALO) is the least popular one with only 8 bullish hedge fund positions. Myers Industries, Inc. (NYSE:MYE) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for MYE is 40.8. 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 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 32.9% in 2020 through December 8th and still beat the market by 16.2 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on MYE as the stock returned 42.7% since the end of the third quarter (through 12/8) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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