We at Insider Monkey have gone over 752 13F filings that hedge funds and prominent investors are required to file by the SEC The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of September 30th. In this article, we look at what those funds think of Banco BBVA Argentina S.A. (NYSE:BBAR) based on that data.
Is Banco BBVA Argentina S.A. (NYSE:BBAR) a buy here? Money managers are becoming more confident. The number of bullish hedge fund bets inched up by 1 in recent months. Our calculations also showed that BBAR isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings and see the video below for Q2 rankings). BBAR was in 9 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2019. There were 8 hedge funds in our database with BBAR positions at the end of the previous quarter.
Video: Click the image to watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.
According to most traders, hedge funds are perceived as slow, old investment tools of years past. While there are over 8000 funds in operation at present, Our researchers look at the leaders of this group, approximately 750 funds. These money managers shepherd the lion’s share of the smart money’s total asset base, and by tailing their inimitable picks, Insider Monkey has unsheathed many investment strategies that have historically outpaced the S&P 500 index. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy defeated the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points annually since its inception in May 2014. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 27.8% since February 2017 (through November 21st) even though the market was up more than 39% during the same period. We just shared a list of 7 short targets in our latest quarterly update .
Ken Griffin of Citadel Investment Group
We leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example Discover is offering this insane cashback card, so we look into shorting the stock. One of the most bullish analysts in America just put his money where his mouth is. He says, “I’m investing more today than I did back in early 2009.” So we check out his pitch. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. We even check out this option genius’ weekly trade ideas. This December we recommended Adams Energy based on an under-the-radar fund manager’s investor letter and the stock gained 20 percent. We’re going to analyze the fresh hedge fund action encompassing Banco BBVA Argentina S.A. (NYSE:BBAR).
How are hedge funds trading Banco BBVA Argentina S.A. (NYSE:BBAR)?
At Q3’s end, a total of 9 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 13% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 7 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in BBAR a year ago. So, let’s find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
More specifically, Arrowstreet Capital was the largest shareholder of Banco BBVA Argentina S.A. (NYSE:BBAR), with a stake worth $3 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Arrowstreet Capital was Renaissance Technologies, which amassed a stake valued at $1 million. D E Shaw, Citadel Investment Group, and Autonomy Capital were also very fond of the stock, becoming one of the largest hedge fund holders of the company. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Autonomy Capital allocated the biggest weight to Banco BBVA Argentina S.A. (NYSE:BBAR), around 0.19% of its 13F portfolio. HighVista Strategies is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.1 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to BBAR.
With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, specific money managers have been driving this bullishness. Renaissance Technologies, founded by Jim Simons, created the most valuable position in Banco BBVA Argentina S.A. (NYSE:BBAR). Renaissance Technologies had $1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group also initiated a $0.3 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new BBAR positions are Minhua Zhang’s Weld Capital Management, John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors, and Andre F. Perold’s HighVista Strategies.
Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Banco BBVA Argentina S.A. (NYSE:BBAR). These stocks are Extreme Networks, Inc (NASDAQ:EXTR), Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. (NYSE:IPOA), Aerie Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:AERI), and ANI Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:ANIP). This group of stocks’ market values are closest to BBAR’s market value.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| EXTR | 16 | 120270 | -3 |
| IPOA | 25 | 327427 | 2 |
| AERI | 28 | 324001 | 10 |
| ANIP | 15 | 96846 | 3 |
| Average | 21 | 217136 | 3 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 21 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $217 million. That figure was $6 million in BBAR’s case. Aerie Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:AERI) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand ANI Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:ANIP) is the least popular one with only 15 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Banco BBVA Argentina S.A. (NYSE:BBAR) is even less popular than ANIP. Hedge funds dodged a bullet by taking a bearish stance towards BBAR. Our calculations showed that the top 20 most popular hedge fund stocks returned 37.4% in 2019 through the end of November and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 9.9 percentage points. Unfortunately BBAR wasn’t nearly as popular as these 20 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was very bearish); BBAR investors were disappointed as the stock returned -9.7% during the fourth quarter (through the end of November) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds as 70 percent of these stocks already outperformed the market so far in Q4.
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.