Hedge Funds and other institutional investors have just completed filing their 13Fs with the Securities and Exchange Commission, revealing their equity portfolios as of the end of September. At Insider Monkey, we follow over 700 of the best-performing investors and by analyzing their 13F filings, we can determine the stocks that they are collectively bullish on. One of their picks is Nike Inc (NYSE:NKE), so let’s take a closer look at the sentiment that surrounds it in the current quarter.
At the end of September, 55 funds from the Insider Monkey database held shares of Nike Inc (NYSE:NKE), down from 57 funds a quarter earlier. However, the level and the change in hedge fund popularity aren’t the only variables you need to analyze to decipher hedge funds’ perspectives. A stock may witness a boost or decline in popularity but it may still be less or more popular than similarly priced stocks. That’s why at the end of this article we will examine companies such as SAP AG (ADR) (NYSE:SAP), Allergan, Inc. (NYSE:AGN), and Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc (NASDAQ:WBA) to gather more data points.
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At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 18% gains over the past 12 months, more than doubling the 8% returns enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs.
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With all of this in mind, let’s go over the recent action encompassing Nike Inc (NYSE:NKE).
What have hedge funds been doing with Nike Inc (NYSE:NKE)?
As stated earlier, a total of 55 funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, down by 4% over the quarter. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).
When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Alex Snow’s Lansdowne Partners has the largest position in Nike Inc (NYSE:NKE), worth close to $1.09 billion, comprising 9.4% of its total 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Lone Pine Capital, managed by Stephen Mandel, which holds a $918.9 million position; 4.1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Other peers that hold long positions comprise David Blood and Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management, John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors and Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies.
