Is SYBT A Good Stock To Buy Now?

The financial regulations require hedge funds and wealthy investors that exceeded the $100 million equity holdings threshold to file a report that shows their positions at the end of every quarter. Even though it isn’t the intention, these filings to a certain extent level the playing field for ordinary investors. The latest round of 13F filings disclosed the funds’ positions on September 30th, about a month before the elections. We at Insider Monkey have made an extensive database of more than 817 of those established hedge funds and famous value investors’ filings. In this article, we analyze how these elite funds and prominent investors traded Stock Yards Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:SYBT) based on those filings.

Is SYBT a good stock to buy now? The best stock pickers were becoming hopeful. The number of long hedge fund bets advanced by 1 lately. Stock Yards Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:SYBT) was in 9 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistics is 11. Our calculations also showed that SYBT 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 today’s marketplace there are many gauges market participants use to assess publicly traded companies. Two of the less utilized gauges are hedge fund and insider trading moves. Our researchers have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the elite investment managers can outpace the broader indices by a healthy amount (see the details here).

Nathaniel August of Mangrove Partners

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. With all of this in mind we’re going to take a look at the key hedge fund action regarding Stock Yards Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:SYBT).

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

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2020, a total of 9 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 13% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards SYBT over the last 21 quarters. So, let’s review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Renaissance Technologies has the biggest position in Stock Yards Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:SYBT), worth close to $6.9 million, accounting for less than 0.1%% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Winton Capital Management, managed by David Harding, which holds a $0.8 million position; less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Other professional money managers with similar optimism encompass Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management, Nathaniel August’s Mangrove Partners and Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Mangrove Partners allocated the biggest weight to Stock Yards Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:SYBT), around 0.06% of its 13F portfolio. Winton Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.03 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to SYBT.

Now, specific money managers have jumped into Stock Yards Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:SYBT) headfirst. Millennium Management, managed by Israel Englander, created the biggest position in Stock Yards Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:SYBT). Millennium Management had $0.3 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital also made a $0.2 million investment in the stock during the quarter.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Stock Yards Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:SYBT). We will take a look at Raven Industries, Inc. (NASDAQ:RAVN), Ingles Markets, Incorporated (NASDAQ:IMKTA), Bright Scholar Education Holdings Limited (NYSE:BEDU), The Gorman-Rupp Company (NYSE:GRC), Magnite Inc. (NASDAQ:MGNI), Oric Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ORIC), and GrowGeneration Corp. (NASDAQ:GRWG). This group of stocks’ market valuations are similar to SYBT’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 13.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $91 million. That figure was $10 million in SYBT’s case. Magnite Inc. (NASDAQ:MGNI) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Bright Scholar Education Holdings Limited (NYSE:BEDU) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. Stock Yards Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:SYBT) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for SYBT is 36.1. 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 SYBT as the stock returned 21.6% 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.