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 5.2% in the 12 month-period that ended October 30, while less than 49% of its stocks beat the benchmark. In contrast, the 30 most popular S&P 500 stocks among the hedge fund investors tracked by the Insider Monkey team returned 9.5% over the same period, which provides evidence that these money managers do have great stock picking abilities. Even more to that, 63% of these stocks managed to beat the S&P 500 Index. 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 The New York Times Company (NYSE:NYT).
Is The New York Times Company (NYSE:NYT) a buy right now? The stock hasn’t moved much over the last two years, but we recently detected some bullish activity by hedge funds. The number of bullish hedge fund positions inched up by 4 in recent months. NYT was in 18 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2015. There were 14 hedge funds in our database with NYT positions at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare NYT to other stocks, including Xenia Hotels & Resorts Inc (NYSE:XHR), Grupo Aeroportuario del Centro Nort (ADR) (NASDAQ:OMAB), and Summit Materials Inc (NYSE:SUM) to get a better sense of its popularity.
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What does the smart money think about The New York Times Company (NYSE:NYT)?
At Q3’s end, a total of 18 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, an increase of 29% from one quarter earlier. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists a few noteworthy hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).
According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, JHL Capital Group, managed by James H. Litinsky, holds the most valuable position in The New York Times Company (NYSE:NYT). The fund reportedly holds a $109.8 million stake in the company, comprising 12.1% of its 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by QVT Financial, led by Daniel Gold, holding a $23.9 million position; the fund has 0.8% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other hedge funds and institutional investors with similar optimism contain Joel Greenblatt’s Gotham Asset Management, Parag Vora’s HG Vora Capital Management and Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies.
