It seems that the masses and most of the financial media hate hedge funds and what they do, but why is this hatred of hedge funds so prominent? At the end of the day, these asset management firms do not gamble the hard-earned money of the people who are on the edge of poverty. Truth be told, most hedge fund managers and other smaller players within this industry are very smart and skilled investors. Of course, they may also make wrong bets in some instances, but no one knows what the future holds and how market participants will react to the bountiful news that floods in each day. The S&P 500 Index gained 7.6% in the 12 month-period that ended November 21, while less than 49% of its stocks beat the benchmark. In contrast, the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks among the top hedge fund investors tracked by the Insider Monkey team returned 18% over the same period, which provides evidence that these money managers do have great stock picking abilities. That’s why we believe it isn’t a waste of time to check out hedge fund sentiment before you invest in a stock like Windstream Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:WIN).
Is Windstream Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:WIN) a buy right now? Money managers are really in an optimistic mood. The number of bullish hedge fund bets swelled by 3 recently. WINwas in 13 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2016. There were 10 hedge funds in our database with WIN holdings 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 Employers Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:EIG), Meritor Inc (NYSE:MTOR), and Monmouth R.E. Inv. Corp. (NYSE:MNR) to gather more data points.
Follow Windstream Holdings Inc. (TSE:WIN)
Follow Windstream Holdings Inc. (TSE:WIN)
We follow over 700 hedge funds and other institutional investors and by analyzing their quarterly 13F filings, we identify stocks that they are collectively bullish on and develop investment strategies based on this data. One strategy that outperformed the market over the last year, involves selecting the 100 best-performing funds and identifying the 30 mid-cap stocks that they are collectively most bullish on. Over the past year, this strategy generated returns of 18%, topping the 8% gain registered by S&P 500 ETFs.
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Now, we’re going to take a look at the new action regarding Windstream Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:WIN).
Hedge fund activity in Windstream Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:WIN)
At the end of the third quarter, a total of 13 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a jump of 30% from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards WIN 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, Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies has the biggest position in Windstream Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:WIN), worth close to $37.3 million, accounting for 0.1% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Steadfast Capital Management, led by Robert Pitts, holding a $35 million position; the fund has 0.6% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other members of the smart money that are bullish contain Stuart J. Zimmer’s Zimmer Partners, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group. We should note that Zimmer Partners 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.
