Monmouth R.E. Inv. Corp. (MNR): Are Hedge Funds Right About This Stock?

Although the masses and most of the financial media blame hedge funds for their exorbitant fee structure and disappointing performance, these investors have proved to have great stock picking abilities over the years (that’s why their assets under management continue to swell). We believe hedge fund sentiment should serve as a crucial tool of an individual investor’s stock selection process, as it may offer great insights of how the brightest minds of the finance industry feel about specific stocks. After all, these people have access to smartest analysts and expensive data/information sources that individual investors can’t match. So should one consider investing in Monmouth R.E. Inv. Corp. (NYSE:MNR)? The smart money sentiment can provide an answer to this question.

Monmouth R.E. Inv. Corp. (NYSE:MNR) was in 8 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. Monmouth R.E. Inv. Corp. (NYSE:MNR) investors should be aware of a decrease in hedge fund interest recently. There were 9 hedge funds in our database with Monmouth R.E. Inv. Corp. (NYSE:MNR) holdings at the end of the previous quarter. It is important to note that the shares of the company rose less than 1% during the quarter, having negligible impact on the hedge fund sentiment.

One of the best ways to understand hedge fund sentiment is to evaluate their behavior towards stocks with similar market caps. At the end of this article, we will compare Monmouth R.E. Inv. Corp. (NYSE:MNR) to other stocks, including Matrix Service Co (NASDAQ:MTRX), Heritage Insurance Holdings Inc (NYSE:HRTG), and Gran Tierra Energy Inc. (NYSEMKT:GTE) to get a better sense of its popularity.

If you’d ask most traders, hedge funds are perceived as slow, old financial vehicles of yesteryear. While there are greater than 8000 funds trading today, our experts look at the upper echelon of this club, around 700 funds. Most estimates calculate that this group of people watch over the majority of the smart money’s total asset base, and by keeping track of their unrivaled picks, Insider Monkey has uncovered a few investment strategies that have historically outrun the broader indices. Insider Monkey’s small-cap hedge fund strategy outpaced the S&P 500 index by 12 percentage points per annum for a decade in their back tests.

With all of this in mind, we’re going to check out the fresh action surrounding Monmouth R.E. Inv. Corp. (NYSE:MNR).

Hedge fund activity in Monmouth R.E. Inv. Corp. (NYSE:MNR)

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 8 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a decline of 11% from the second quarter. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings substantially (or already accumulated large positions).

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, J. Alan Reid, Jr.’s Forward Management has the largest position in Monmouth R.E. Inv. Corp. (NYSE:MNR), worth close to $12.1 million, comprising 1% of its total 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Renaissance Technologies, which holds a $6.6 million position; less than 0.1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Some other members of the smart money that hold long positions encompass John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors, Jeffrey Bronchick’s Cove Street Capital, and D E Shaw.