Insider Monkey finished processing more than 700 13F filings made by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of September 30. In this article we are going to take a look at smart money sentiment towards the PowerShares QQQ Trust, Series 1 (ETF) (NASDAQ:QQQ).
Is the PowerShares QQQ Trust, Series 1 (ETF) (NASDAQ:QQQ) a cheap stock to buy now? Prominent investors are taking an optimistic view. The number of long hedge fund bets improved by 4 in recent months. QQQ was in 24 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. There were 20 hedge funds in our database with QQQ positions at the end of the previous quarter. 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 in popularity but it may still be less popular than similarly priced stocks. That’s why at the end of this article we will examine companies such as Illinois Tool Works Inc. (NYSE:ITW), Sony Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:SNE), and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:REGN) to gather more data points.
Follow Powershares Qqq Trust (INDEXNYSEG:QQQQ)
Follow Powershares Qqq Trust (INDEXNYSEG:QQQQ)
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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What have hedge funds been doing with the PowerShares QQQ Trust, Series 1 (ETF) (NASDAQ:QQQ)?
At the end of the third quarter, a total of 24 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a 20% rise from the previous quarter, pushing hedge fund ownership to its highest total in the past five quarters. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a few noteworthy hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).
According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group has the biggest call position in the PowerShares QQQ Trust, Series 1 (ETF) (NASDAQ:QQQ), worth close to $508.8 million. Coming in second is Matthew Knauer and Mina Faltas of Nokota Management, with a $430.4 million call position; 7.5% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the holding. Some other professional money managers that are bullish contain Thomas Bailard’s Bailard Inc and J. Alan Reid, Jr.’s Forward Management.
