Is YNDX Stock A Buy or Sell?

Insider Monkey has processed numerous 13F filings of hedge funds and successful value investors to create an extensive database of hedge fund holdings. The 13F filings show the hedge funds’ and successful investors’ positions as of the end of the fourth quarter. You can find articles about an individual hedge fund’s trades on numerous financial news websites. However, in this article we will take a look at their collective moves over the last 5 years and analyze what the smart money thinks of Yandex NV (NASDAQ:YNDX) based on that data.

Is YNDX stock a buy or sell? Yandex NV (NASDAQ:YNDX) was in 34 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistic is 48. YNDX has seen an increase in enthusiasm from smart money lately. There were 33 hedge funds in our database with YNDX positions at the end of the third quarter. Our calculations also showed that YNDX isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q4 rankings).

Hedge funds’ reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn’t keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Our research was able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 124 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here).

John Armitage of Egerton Capital

At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, the House passed a landmark bill decriminalizing marijuana. So, we are checking out this under the radar cannabis stock right now. We go through lists like the 10 best battery stocks to buy to identify the next stock with 10x upside potential. 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. Now we’re going to view the latest hedge fund action regarding Yandex NV (NASDAQ:YNDX).

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

Heading into the first quarter of 2021, a total of 34 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 3% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 38 hedge funds with a bullish position in YNDX a year ago. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management has the largest position in Yandex NV (NASDAQ:YNDX), worth close to $385.9 million, accounting for 0.3% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by John Armitage of Egerton Capital Limited, with a $327.1 million position; the fund has 1.9% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish contain Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital, Rajiv Jain’s GQG Partners and Richard Driehaus’s Driehaus Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Cartica Management allocated the biggest weight to Yandex NV (NASDAQ:YNDX), around 11.08% of its 13F portfolio. Solel Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 3.97 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to YNDX.

There weren’t any hedge funds initiating brand new positions in the stock during the fourth quarter.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Yandex NV (NASDAQ:YNDX) but similarly valued. These stocks are Slack Technologies Inc (NYSE:WORK), Fresenius Medical Care AG & Co. KGaA (NYSE:FMS), The Williams Companies, Inc. (NYSE:WMB), Consolidated Edison, Inc. (NYSE:ED), The Kroger Co. (NYSE:KR), Fortinet Inc (NASDAQ:FTNT), and Cerner Corporation (NASDAQ:CERN). This group of stocks’ market valuations match YNDX’s market valuation.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 35.3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1341 million. That figure was $1624 million in YNDX’s case. Slack Technologies Inc (NYSE:WORK) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Fresenius Medical Care AG & Co. KGaA (NYSE:FMS) is the least popular one with only 9 bullish hedge fund positions. Yandex NV (NASDAQ:YNDX) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for YNDX is 49.2. 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. This is a slightly negative signal and we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. Our calculations showed that top 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 81.2% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 26 percentage points. These stocks gained 7.9% in 2021 through April 1st and surpassed the market again by 0.4 percentage points. Unfortunately YNDX wasn’t nearly as popular as these 30 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); YNDX investors were disappointed as the stock returned -6.6% since the end of December (through 4/1) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market in 2020.

Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.