A whopping number of 13F filings filed with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has been processed by Insider Monkey so that individual investors can look at the overall hedge fund sentiment towards the stocks included in their watchlists. These freshly-submitted public filings disclose money managers’ equity positions as of the end of the three-month period that ended September 30, so let’s proceed with the discussion of the hedge fund sentiment on Marlin Business Services Corp. (NASDAQ:MRLN) .
Is Marlin Business Services Corp. (NASDAQ:MRLN) a buy, sell, or hold? Prominent investors are categorically in a bullish mood. The number of bullish hedge fund positions grew by 1 in recent months. MRLN was in 7 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2016. There were 6 hedge funds in our database with MRLN holdings at the end of the previous quarter. The level and the change in hedge fund popularity aren’t the only variables you need to analyze to decipher hedge funds’ perspectives. A stock may witness a boost in popularity but it may still be less popular than similarly priced stocks. That’s why at the end of this article we will examine companies such as Container Store Group Inc (NYSE:TCS), Olympic Steel, Inc. (NASDAQ:ZEUS), and Patriot National Inc (NYSE:PN) to gather more data points.
Follow Marlin Business Services Corp (NASDAQ:MRLN)
Follow Marlin Business Services Corp (NASDAQ:MRLN)
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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Keeping this in mind, let’s take a look at the fresh action surrounding Marlin Business Services Corp. (NASDAQ:MRLN).
How are hedge funds trading Marlin Business Services Corp. (NASDAQ:MRLN)?
At the end of the third quarter, a total of 7 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, growth of 17% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards MRLN over the last 5 quarters. With hedge funds’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).
Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Red Mountain Capital, led by Willem Mesdag, holds the most valuable position in Marlin Business Services Corp. (NASDAQ:MRLN). Red Mountain Capital has a $58.2 million position in the stock, comprising 17.6% of its 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Renaissance Technologies, one of the biggest hedge funds in the world, with a $2.8 million position; the fund has less than 0.1% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other members of the smart money that are bullish consist of William Black’s Consector Capital, Peter Algert and Kevin Coldiron’s Algert Coldiron Investors and Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital. 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.
