If you are looking for the best ideas for your portfolio you may want to consider some of Wedgewood Partners top stock picks. Wedgewood Partners, an investment management firm, is bearish on Old Dominion Freight Line Inc. (NASDAQ:ODFL) stock. In its Q2 2019 investor letter – you can download a copy here – the firm discussed its investment thesis on Old Dominion Freight Line Inc. (NASDAQ:ODFL) stock. Old Dominion Freight Line Inc. (NASDAQ:ODFL) is a transport company.
On July 16, 2019, Wedgewood Partners had released its Q2 2019 investor letter. The investment firm said that it liquidated its position in Old Dominion Freight Line Inc. (NASDAQ:ODFL) stock in Q2 2019. The stock has posted a return of 83.5% in the trailing one year period, outperforming the S&P 500 Index which returned 20.5% in the same period. This suggests that the investment firm was wrong in its decision. On a year-to-date basis, Old Dominion Freight Line Inc. (NASDAQ:ODFL) stock has risen by 58.3%.
Wedgewood Partners fund posted a return of 4.3% in the second quarter of 2019, in-line with the S&P 500 Index which also returned 4.3% in the same quarter. Let’s take a look at comments made by Wedgewood Partners about Old Dominion Freight Line Inc. (NASDAQ:ODFL) in the Q2 2019 investor letter.
“We have decided to liquidate our holdings in Old Dominion Freight Lines in order to pursue opportunities elsewhere. We remain impressed with Old Dominion’s best-in-class business model and with the quality of its management team and operations, so we wouldn’t call this sale a vote against the Company. Results have been quite good while we have owned this company, although the market has lost interest in the broad transportation industry generally. Macroeconomic doubts, driven in large part by uncertain international trade dynamics, have weighed on sentiment. In addition, tremendously strong results from Old Dominion in 2018 – partially before we owned the company, and partially during our ownership – have created very difficult year-over-year comparisons. While, of course, this has been no surprise to us, we believe this also has weighed on sentiment to some degree.
As a reminder on 2018, the tremendous strength in Old Dominion’s business (which created difficult comparisons for 2019) was driven by a few issues above typical macroeconomic factors:
• Old Dominion, like other Less-than-Truckload (LTL) carriers, has significant industrial exposure, and changes to U.S. tax law at the beginning of 2018 drove incremental industrial strength and increased capital investment, both of which provided additional juice to Old Dominion’s already thriving industrial business.
• The extreme shortage of capacity in the Truckload (TL) industry, driven by Electronic Logging Device (ELD) mandate we’ve discussed extensively, actually caused some traditional Truckload business to slip into Less-than-Truckload, especially toward the end of 2017 and in the first half of 2018. This had been nearly unheard of in trucking previously. As the Truckload industry and its customers adjusted to the lower level of TL capacity over the course of several quarters, this particular anomaly has reverted to normal, with the overflow of capacity into LTL disappearing.
Unlike our holding C.H. Robinson, which has been and will remain a primary beneficiary of the shrinking capacity in the Truckload industry over the long term, the fundamental drivers of Old Dominion’s business model have been more purely cyclical in nature. As a result, we have chosen to retain our C.H. Robinson position while liquidating Old Dominion in favor of other recent buys and additions, such as Motorola Solutions and Ross Stores, both of which present growth opportunities which are less cyclical in nature.”
nd3000/Shutterstock.com
In Q1 2020, the number of bullish hedge fund positions on Old Dominion Freight Line Inc. (NASDAQ:ODFL) stock decreased by about 3% from the previous quarter (see the chart here), so a number of other hedge fund managers seem to agree with ODFL’s downside potential. Our calculations showed that Old Dominion Freight Line Inc. (NASDAQ:ODFL) isn’t ranked among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds.
The top 10 stocks among hedge funds returned 185% since the end of 2014 and outperformed the S&P 500 Index ETFs by more than 109 percentage points. We know it sounds unbelievable. You have been dismissing our articles about top hedge fund stocks mostly because you were fed biased information by other media outlets about hedge funds’ poor performance. You could have doubled the size of your nest egg by investing in the top hedge fund stocks instead of dumb S&P 500 ETFs. Below you can watch our video about the top 5 hedge fund stocks right now. All of these stocks had positive returns in 2020.
Video: Top 5 Stocks Among Hedge Funds
At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. Currently, investors are pessimistic about commercial real estate investments. So, we are checking out this contrarian play to diversify our market exposure. We go through lists like the 10 most profitable companies in America 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. If you want to find out the best healthcare stock to buy right now, you can watch our latest hedge fund manager interview here. You can subscribe to our free enewsletter below to receive our stories in your inbox:
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
