Our extensive research has shown that imitating the smart money can generate significant returns for retail investors, which is why we track more than 700 prominent money managers and analyze their quarterly 13F filings. The stocks that are heavily bought by hedge funds historically outperformed the market, though there is no shortage of high profile gigantic failures like hedge funds’ recent losses in Valeant. Let’s take a closer look at what the funds we track think about AEGON N.V. (ADR) (NYSE:AEG) in this article.
AEGON N.V. (ADR) (NYSE:AEG) has seen an increase in support from the world’s most successful money managers of late. AEG was in 8 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. There were 4 hedge funds in our database with AEG holdings at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare AEG to other stocks including News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA), Alaska Air Group, Inc. (NYSE:ALK), and Alleghany Corporation (NYSE:Y) to get a better sense of its popularity.
At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 18% gains over the past 12 months, more than doubling the 8% returns enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs.
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How have hedgies been trading AEGON N.V. (ADR) (NYSE:AEG)?
At the end of the third quarter, a total of 8 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, up by 100% from the previous quarter. By comparison, 0 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in AEG heading into this year. So, let’s find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Renaissance Technologies, one of the largest hedge funds in the world, has the biggest position in AEGON N.V. (ADR) (NYSE:AEG), worth close to $6.1 million. The second most bullish fund manager is Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell of Arrowstreet Capital, with a $3.3 million position. Remaining hedge funds and institutional investors that hold long positions include John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management and Matthew Tewksbury’s Stevens Capital Management. We should note that none of these hedge funds are among our list of the 100 best performing hedge funds which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-microcap stocks.
As one would reasonably expect, key hedge funds were leading the bulls’ herd. Renaissance Technologies created the most valuable position in AEGON N.V. (ADR) (NYSE:AEG) at the end of the quarter. Stevens Capital Management also initiated a $0.4 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are David Costen Haley’s HBK Investments and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group.
Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to AEGON N.V. (ADR) (NYSE:AEG). We will take a look at News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA), Alaska Air Group, Inc. (NYSE:ALK), Alleghany Corporation (NYSE:Y), and Regency Centers Corp (NYSE:REG). This group of stocks’ market valuations are closest to AEG’s market valuation.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| NWSA | 33 | 1020494 | -2 |
| ALK | 36 | 997368 | -6 |
| Y | 24 | 407335 | 2 |
| REG | 11 | 165475 | 5 |
As you can see these stocks had an average of 26 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $648 million. That figure was $11 million in AEG’s case. Alaska Air Group, Inc. (NYSE:ALK) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Regency Centers Corp (NYSE:REG) is the least popular one with only 11 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks AEGON N.V. (ADR) (NYSE:AEG) is even less popular than REG. Considering that hedge funds aren’t fond of this stock in relation to other companies analyzed in this article, it may be a good idea to analyze it in detail and understand why the smart money isn’t behind this stock. This isn’t necessarily bad news. Although it is possible that hedge funds may think the stock is overpriced and view the stock as a short candidate, they may not be very familiar with the bullish thesis. In either case more research is warranted.
Disclosure: None
