Is Vista Outdoor Inc (VSTO) A Good Stock To Buy?

A whopping number of 13F filings filed with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has been processed by Insider Monkey so that individual investors can look at the overall hedge fund sentiment towards the stocks included in their watchlists. These freshly-submitted public filings disclose money managers’ equity positions as of the end of the three-month period that ended September 30, so let’s proceed with the discussion of the hedge fund sentiment on Vista Outdoor Inc (NYSE:VSTO) .

Vista Outdoor Inc (NYSE:VSTO) was in 21 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2016. VSTO has seen a decrease in hedge fund sentiment recently. There were 27 hedge funds in our database with VSTO positions at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare VSTO to other stocks including XPO Logistics Inc (NYSE:XPO), National Health Investors Inc (NYSE:NHI), and American Eagle Outfitters (NYSE:AEO) to get a better sense of its popularity.

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.

Hedge fund activity in Vista Outdoor Inc (NYSE:VSTO)

At Q3’s end, a total of 21 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a 22% decrease from the second quarter of 2016. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards VSTO over the last 5 quarters. So, let’s check out 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, Jeffrey Gates’ Gates Capital Management has the largest position in Vista Outdoor Inc (NYSE:VSTO), worth close to $93.2 million, amounting to 3.4% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is HBK Investments, led by David Costen Haley, holding a $63.8 million position. Some other peers that hold long positions include Christopher A. Winham’s Tide Point Capital, D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw and Anand Parekh’s Alyeska Investment Group. We should note that Gates Capital Management is 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.