The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. We at Insider Monkey have plowed through 823 13F filings that hedge funds and well-known value investors are required to file by the SEC. The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of June 30th, when the S&P 500 Index was trading around the 3100 level. Stocks kept going up since then. In this article we look at how hedge funds traded Liberty Tripadvisor Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LTRPA) and determine whether the smart money was really smart about this stock.
Is Liberty Tripadvisor Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LTRPA) a healthy stock for your portfolio? Money managers were taking an optimistic view. The number of bullish hedge fund bets rose by 1 lately. Liberty Tripadvisor Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LTRPA) was in 22 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistics is 34. Our calculations also showed that LTRPA isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks).
Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.
Why do we pay any attention at all to hedge fund sentiment? Our research has shown that a select group of hedge fund holdings outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by 56 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that’ll significantly underperform the market. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 and they lost 34% through August 17th. That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is an extremely useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.
Donald Sussman of Paloma Partners
At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost precious metals prices. So, we are checking out this lithium company which could also benefit from the electric car adoption. We go through lists like the 10 most profitable companies in the world to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. 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 to get excerpts of these letters in your inbox. Keeping this in mind we’re going to take a gander at the recent hedge fund action regarding Liberty Tripadvisor Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LTRPA).
How are hedge funds trading Liberty Tripadvisor Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LTRPA)?
At the end of the second quarter, a total of 22 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 5% from the first quarter of 2020. By comparison, 21 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in LTRPA a year ago. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).
Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Eagle Capital Management, managed by Boykin Curry, holds the biggest position in Liberty Tripadvisor Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LTRPA). Eagle Capital Management has a $10.8 million position in the stock, comprising less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio. On Eagle Capital Management’s heels is D E Shaw, led by D. E. Shaw, holding a $6 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other professional money managers that hold long positions include Renaissance Technologies, Jeffrey Bronchick’s Cove Street Capital and Michael A. Price and Amos Meron’s Empyrean Capital Partners. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Cove Street Capital allocated the biggest weight to Liberty Tripadvisor Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LTRPA), around 0.88% of its 13F portfolio. Isomer Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 0.57 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to LTRPA.
As aggregate interest increased, specific money managers have jumped into Liberty Tripadvisor Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LTRPA) headfirst. Diametric Capital, managed by Nick Thakore, initiated the largest position in Liberty Tripadvisor Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LTRPA). Diametric Capital had $0.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Gavin Saitowitz and Cisco J. del Valle’s Springbok Capital also initiated a $0.2 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new LTRPA investors: Donald Sussman’s Paloma Partners and Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital.
Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Liberty Tripadvisor Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LTRPA) but similarly valued. These stocks are Overseas Shipholding Group, Inc. (NYSE:OSG), Penns Woods Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:PWOD), CIM Commercial Trust Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCT), Blink Charging Co. (NASDAQ:BLNK), Exfo Inc (NASDAQ:EXFO), MVB Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:MVBF), and Investar Holding Corporation (NASDAQ:ISTR). This group of stocks’ market valuations match LTRPA’s market valuation.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| OSG | 12 | 34869 | 1 |
| PWOD | 1 | 4067 | 0 |
| CMCT | 4 | 11578 | -1 |
| BLNK | 2 | 1520 | -1 |
| EXFO | 1 | 2791 | 0 |
| MVBF | 5 | 19270 | -2 |
| ISTR | 4 | 14538 | -3 |
| Average | 4.1 | 12662 | -0.9 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 4.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $13 million. That figure was $42 million in LTRPA’s case. Overseas Shipholding Group, Inc. (NYSE:OSG) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Penns Woods Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:PWOD) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Liberty Tripadvisor Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LTRPA) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for LTRPA is 75.4. 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. Our calculations showed that top 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.4% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10.1 percentage points. These stocks gained 24.8% in 2020 through the end of September and still beat the market by 19.3 percentage points. Unfortunately LTRPA wasn’t nearly as popular as these 10 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on LTRPA were disappointed as the stock returned -18.8% during the third quarter and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market in 2020.
Follow Liberty Tripadvisor Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:LTRPA)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
