We have been waiting for this for a year and finally the third quarter ended up showing a nice bump in the performance of small-cap stocks. Both the S&P 500 and Russell 2000 were up since the end of the second quarter, but small-cap stocks outperformed the large-cap stocks by double digits. This is important for hedge funds, which are big supporters of small-cap stocks, because their investors started pulling some of their capital out due to poor recent performance. It is very likely that equity hedge funds will deliver better risk adjusted returns in the second half of this year. In this article we are going to look at how this recent market trend affected the sentiment of hedge funds towards PNC Financial Services Group Inc (NYSE:PNC), and what that likely means for the prospects of the company and its stock.
PNC Financial Services Group Inc (NYSE:PNC) investors should be aware of an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers recently. At the end of this article we will also compare PNC to other stocks including America Movil SAB de CV (ADR) (NYSE:AMX), Raytheon Company (NYSE:RTN), and Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) to get a better sense of its popularity.
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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 take a glance at the recent action regarding PNC Financial Services Group Inc (NYSE:PNC).
Hedge fund activity in PNC Financial Services Group Inc (NYSE:PNC)
During the third quarter, the number of funds tracked by Insider Monkey long PNC Financial Services Group appreciated by 13% to 51. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of notable hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes substantially (or already accumulated large positions).
When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Cliff Asness’ AQR Capital Management has the biggest position in PNC Financial Services Group Inc (NYSE:PNC), worth close to $492 million, amounting to 0.8% of its total 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Adage Capital Management, led by Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson, holding a $185.1 million position; 0.5% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Some other professional money managers that are bullish contain David E. Shaw’s D E Shaw, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management, and Ric Dillon’s Diamond Hill Capital.
