The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. We at Insider Monkey have plowed through 817 13F filings that hedge funds and well-known value investors are required to file by the SEC. The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of September 30th, about a month before the elections. In this article we look at what those investors think of Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ:ORCL).
Is Oracle (ORCL) a good stock to buy now? The best stock pickers were becoming hopeful. The number of bullish hedge fund positions increased by 7 recently. Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ:ORCL) was in 56 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistics is 74. Our calculations also showed that ORCL 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.
If you’d ask most market participants, hedge funds are seen as unimportant, old investment tools of years past. While there are greater than 8000 funds with their doors open at present, Our researchers choose to focus on the masters of this club, around 850 funds. It is estimated that this group of investors oversee the majority of the hedge fund industry’s total asset base, and by shadowing their finest investments, Insider Monkey has discovered a few investment strategies that have historically beaten the S&P 500 index. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy outrun the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points annually since its inception in March 2017. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 13% since February 2017 (through November 17th) even though the market was up 65% during the same period. We just shared a list of 6 short targets in our latest quarterly update .
Richard S. Pzena of Pzena Investment Management
At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, we believe electric vehicles and energy storage are set to become giant markets. Tesla’s stock price skyrocketed, yet lithium prices are still below their 2019 highs. So, we are checking out this lithium stock right now. We go through lists like the 15 best blue chip stocks to buy 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 Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ:ORCL).
Hedge fund activity in Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ:ORCL)
At the end of September, a total of 56 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 14% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 56 hedge funds with a bullish position in ORCL a year ago. With hedge funds’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).
When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management has the number one position in Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ:ORCL), worth close to $799.6 million, amounting to 0.7% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is AQR Capital Management, managed by Cliff Asness, which holds a $215 million position; the fund has 0.4% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish contain Israel Englander’s Millennium Management, Richard S. Pzena’s Pzena Investment Management and Noam Gottesman’s GLG Partners. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Wallace R. Weitz & Co. allocated the biggest weight to Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ:ORCL), around 2.15% of its 13F portfolio. Diametric Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 2.1 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ORCL.
With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, some big names have been driving this bullishness. Samlyn Capital, managed by Robert Pohly, assembled the most valuable position in Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ:ORCL). Samlyn Capital had $26.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Brian Ashford-Russell and Tim Woolley’s Polar Capital also made a $16.2 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new ORCL investors: Rob Citrone’s Discovery Capital Management, Nehal Chopra’s Ratan Capital Group, and Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp.
Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ:ORCL) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (NYSE:TMO), Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO), McDonald’s Corporation (NYSE:MCD), Novo Nordisk A/S (NYSE:NVO), The Unilever Group (NYSE:UL), Costco Wholesale Corporation (NASDAQ:COST), and ASML Holding N.V. (NASDAQ:ASML). All of these stocks’ market caps are similar to ORCL’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| TMO | 80 | 4972042 | 7 |
| CSCO | 59 | 3931205 | 0 |
| MCD | 65 | 2480040 | 8 |
| NVO | 22 | 3294003 | -2 |
| UL | 13 | 159946 | 0 |
| COST | 73 | 3850375 | 12 |
| ASML | 23 | 2057327 | -2 |
| Average | 47.9 | 2963563 | 3.3 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 47.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $2964 million. That figure was $2338 million in ORCL’s case. Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (NYSE:TMO) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand The Unilever Group (NYSE:UL) is the least popular one with only 13 bullish hedge fund positions. Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ:ORCL) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ORCL is 64.8. 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. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. 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 31.6% in 2020 through December 2nd and beat the market again by 16 percentage points. Unfortunately ORCL wasn’t nearly as popular as these 20 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on ORCL were disappointed as the stock returned -0.6% since the end of September (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 many of these stocks already outperformed the market so far this year.
Follow Oracle Corp (NYSE:ORCL)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
