The 700+ hedge funds and money managers tracked by Insider Monkey have already compiled and submitted their 13F filings for the third quarter, which unveil their equity positions as of September 30. We went through these filings, fixed typos and other more significant errors and identified the changes in hedge fund positions. Our extensive review of these public filings is finally over, so this article is set to reveal the smart money sentiment towards Virgin America Inc (NASDAQ:VA).
Virgin America Inc (NASDAQ:VA) shares didn’t see a lot of action during the third quarter. Overall, hedge fund sentiment was unchanged. The stock was in 25 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September, same as at the end of June. 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 Ligand Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:LGND), Grifols SA, Barcelona (NASDAQ:GRFS), and Wintrust Financial Corp (NASDAQ:WTFC) to gather more data points.
Follow Virgin America Inc. (NASDAQ:VA)
Follow Virgin America Inc. (NASDAQ:VA)
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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What does the smart money think about Virgin America Inc (NASDAQ:VA)?
Heading into the fourth quarter of 2016, a total of 25 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, unchanged from the previous quarter. After a burst of bullish initiations in Q1, hedge fund sentiment towards the stock has cooled. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes considerably (or already accumulated large positions).
According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Stephen C. Freidheim’s Cyrus Capital Partners has the biggest position in Virgin America Inc (NASDAQ:VA), worth close to $562.3 million, amounting to 54.6% of its total 13F portfolio. On Cyrus Capital Partners’ heels is Alpine Associates, managed by Robert Emil Zoellner, which holds a $53.9 million position; 2% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Other professional money managers that hold long positions encompass Nick Niell’s Arrowgrass Capital Partners, Tom Sandell’s Sandell Asset Management, and Gordy Holterman and Derek Dunn’s Overland Advisors.
