Was The Smart Money Right About Snowflake Inc (SNOW) So Far?

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. We have processed the filings of the more than 887 world-class investment firms that we track and now have access to the collective wisdom contained in these filings, which are based on their December 31st holdings, data that is available nowhere else. Should you consider Snowflake Inc (NYSE:SNOW) for your portfolio? We’ll look to this invaluable collective wisdom for the answer.

Snowflake Inc (NYSE:SNOW) was in 54 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of December. The all time high for this statistic is 59. SNOW investors should be aware of a decrease in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds lately. There were 59 hedge funds in our database with SNOW positions at the end of the third quarter. Our calculations also showed that SNOW isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q4 rankings).

In the financial world there are a lot of gauges shareholders can use to value stocks. A pair of the best gauges are hedge fund and insider trading sentiment. Our researchers have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the elite investment managers can trounce the S&P 500 by a healthy amount (see the details here). Also, our monthly newsletter’s portfolio of long stock picks returned 197% since March 2017 (through March 2021) and beat the S&P 500 Index by 124 percentage points. You can download a sample issue of this newsletter on our website .

Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway

At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, lithium mining is one of the fastest growing industries right now, so we are checking out stock pitches like this emerging lithium stock. We go through lists like the 10 best hydrogen fuel cell stocks to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our homepage. Now let’s go over the new hedge fund action surrounding Snowflake Inc (NYSE:SNOW).

Do Hedge Funds Think SNOW Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?

At the end of the fourth quarter, a total of 54 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -8% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 0 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in SNOW a year ago. So, let’s review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

More specifically, Altimeter Capital Management was the largest shareholder of Snowflake Inc (NYSE:SNOW), with a stake worth $2670.9 million reported as of the end of December. Trailing Altimeter Capital Management was Berkshire Hathaway, which amassed a stake valued at $1723.7 million. Coatue Management, Tiger Global Management LLC, and D1 Capital Partners 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 Altimeter Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Snowflake Inc (NYSE:SNOW), around 24.71% of its 13F portfolio. 3G Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 9.45 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to SNOW.

Seeing as Snowflake Inc (NYSE:SNOW) has witnessed a decline in interest from the aggregate hedge fund industry, it’s easy to see that there were a few money managers that decided to sell off their full holdings last quarter. Interestingly, Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management said goodbye to the biggest stake of all the hedgies monitored by Insider Monkey, totaling close to $47.3 million in stock. Karthik Sarma’s fund, SRS Investment Management, also sold off its stock, about $35.1 million worth. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 5 funds last quarter.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Snowflake Inc (NYSE:SNOW) but similarly valued. We will take a look at S&P Global Inc. (NYSE:SPGI), Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT), Zoetis Inc (NYSE:ZTS), Canadian National Railway Company (NYSE:CNI), Altria Group Inc (NYSE:MO), Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ:FISV), and NIO Inc. (NYSE:NIO). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble SNOW’s market cap.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 56.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $2988 million. That figure was $7723 million in SNOW’s case. Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ:FISV) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Canadian National Railway Company (NYSE:CNI) is the least popular one with only 31 bullish hedge fund positions. Snowflake Inc (NYSE:SNOW) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for SNOW is 45.7. Stocks with higher number of hedge fund positions relative to other stocks as well as relative to their historical range receive a higher sentiment score. This is a slightly negative signal and we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. Our calculations showed that top 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 90.7% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 35 percentage points. These stocks gained 13.6% in 2021 through April 30th and surpassed the market again by 1.6 percentage points. Unfortunately SNOW wasn’t nearly as popular as these 10 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); SNOW investors were disappointed as the stock returned -17.7% since the end of December (through 4/30) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market in 2020.

Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.