Sun Life Financial Inc (SLF): What Smart Money Thinks about This Stock?

At Insider Monkey, we pore over the filings of more than 700 top investment firms every quarter, a process we have now completed for the latest reporting period. The data we’ve gathered as a result gives us access to a wealth of collective knowledge based on these firms’ portfolio holdings as of September 30. In this article, we will use that wealth of knowledge to determine whether or not Sun Life Financial Inc (NYSE:SLF) makes for a good investment right now.

Sun Life Financial Inc (NYSE:SLF) witnessed an increase in support from the world’s most successful money managers last quarter. There were 13 funds in our database with SLF positions at the end of September. 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 Analog Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADI), International Paper Company (NYSE:IP), and Dollar General Corp. (NYSE:DG) to gather more data points.

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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With all of this in mind, let’s take a look at the key action encompassing Sun Life Financial Inc. (USA) (NYSE:SLF).

What have hedge funds been doing with Sun Life Financial Inc (NYSE:SLF)?

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 13 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long Sun Life Financial, a change of 30% from the end of the second quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards SLF over the last five quarters. So, let’s check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital has the biggest position in Sun Life Financial Inc (NYSE:SLF), worth close to $32.4 million, accounting for 0.1% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors, with a $17.9 million position; 0.1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Some other professional money managers that hold long positions consist of Renaissance Technologies (one of the biggest hedge funds in the world), Cliff Asness’ AQR Capital Management, and Israel Englander’s Millennium 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.