The worries about the election and the ongoing uncertainty about the path of interest-rate increases have been keeping investors on the sidelines. Of course, most hedge funds and other asset managers have been underperforming main stock market indices since the middle of 2015. Interestingly though, smaller-cap stocks registered their best performance relative to the large-capitalization stocks since the end of the June quarter, suggesting that this may be the best time to take a cue from their stock picks. In fact, the Russell 2000 Index gained more than 15% since the beginning of the third quarter, while the Standard and Poor’s 500 benchmark returned less than 6%. This article will lay out and discuss the hedge fund and institutional investor sentiment towards Universal Electronics Inc (NASDAQ:UEIC).
Universal Electronics Inc (NASDAQ:UEIC) investors should pay attention to an increase in hedge fund interest lately. UEIC was in 9 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. There were 8 hedge funds in our database with UEIC positions at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare UEIC to other stocks including Cliffs Natural Resources Inc (NYSE:CLF), Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (NYSE:ANF), and United Fire Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:UFCS) to get a better sense of its popularity.
Follow Universal Electronics Inc (NASDAQ:UEIC)
Follow Universal Electronics Inc (NASDAQ:UEIC)
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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How are hedge funds trading Universal Electronics Inc (NASDAQ:UEIC)?
Heading into the fourth quarter of 2016, a total of 9 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, up by 13% from the second quarter of 2016. On the other hand, there were a total of 10 hedge funds with a bullish position in UEIC at the beginning of this year. So, let’s review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Richard Driehaus’ Driehaus Capital has the most valuable position in Universal Electronics Inc (NASDAQ:UEIC), worth close to $11 million. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Columbus Circle Investors, led by Principal Global Investors, holding a $8.6 million position. Remaining professional money managers with similar optimism encompass Mark Broach’s Manatuck Hill Partners, Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital and Renaissance Technologies, one of the largest hedge funds in the world. We should note that none of these hedge funds are among our list of the 100 best performing hedge funds which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-microcap stocks.
