Is NIU A Good Stock To Buy Now?

Many prominent investors, including Warren Buffett, David Tepper and Stan Druckenmiller, have been cautious regarding the current bull market and missed out as the stock market reached another high in recent weeks. On the other hand, technology hedge funds weren’t timid and registered double digit market beating gains. Financials, energy and industrial stocks aren’t doing great but many of the stocks that delivered strong returns since March are still going very strong and hedge funds actually increased their positions in these stocks. In this article we will find out how hedge fund sentiment to Niu Technologies (NASDAQ:NIU) changed recently.

Is NIU a good stock to buy now? Niu Technologies (NASDAQ:NIU) was in 14 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistic is 8. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. NIU investors should be aware of an increase in enthusiasm from smart money of late. There were 8 hedge funds in our database with NIU holdings at the end of June. Our calculations also showed that NIU 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 numerous tools stock market investors have at their disposal to grade publicly traded companies. Two of the less known tools are hedge fund and insider trading indicators. Our researchers have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the best money managers can outclass their index-focused peers by a superb amount (see the details here).

Richard Driehaus of Driehaus Capital

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 we’re going to go over the key hedge fund action regarding Niu Technologies (NASDAQ:NIU).

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

At the end of September, a total of 14 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 75% from the second quarter of 2020. On the other hand, there were a total of 5 hedge funds with a bullish position in NIU a year ago. So, let’s review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

The largest stake in Niu Technologies (NASDAQ:NIU) was held by Yiheng Capital, which reported holding $67.9 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Renaissance Technologies with a $12.9 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Cinctive Capital Management, Millennium Management, and Two Sigma Advisors. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Yiheng Capital allocated the biggest weight to Niu Technologies (NASDAQ:NIU), around 4.09% of its 13F portfolio. Dalton Investments is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 1.03 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to NIU.

Consequently, some big names have been driving this bullishness. Cinctive Capital Management, managed by Richard SchimeláandáLawrence Sapanski, established the biggest position in Niu Technologies (NASDAQ:NIU). Cinctive Capital Management had $5.4 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group also made a $0.9 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Richard Driehaus’s Driehaus Capital, Benjamin A. Smith’s Laurion Capital Management, and Greg Eisner’s Engineers Gate Manager.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Niu Technologies (NASDAQ:NIU) but similarly valued. These stocks are Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:SBGI), RLJ Lodging Trust (NYSE:RLJ), Azure Power Global Limited (NYSE:AZRE), Industrial Logistics Properties Trust (NASDAQ:ILPT), Michaels Companies Inc (NASDAQ:MIK), Southwestern Energy Company (NYSE:SWN), and Global Net Lease, Inc. (NYSE:GNL). All of these stocks’ market caps are similar to NIU’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 16 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $126 million. That figure was $102 million in NIU’s case. Michaels Companies Inc (NASDAQ:MIK) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Azure Power Global Limited (NYSE:AZRE) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. Niu Technologies (NASDAQ:NIU) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for NIU is 54.7. 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 NIU as the stock returned 49.7% 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.