We at Insider Monkey have gone over 873 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 June 30th. In this article, we look at what those funds think of IHS Markit Ltd. (NYSE:INFO) based on that data.
Is IHS Markit Ltd. (NYSE:INFO) a first-rate stock to buy now? Investors who are in the know were buying. The number of long hedge fund bets rose by 7 lately. IHS Markit Ltd. (NYSE:INFO) was in 61 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the second quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic was previously 59. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its new all time high. Our calculations also showed that INFO isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).
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Peter Rathjens of Arrowstreet Capital
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Do Hedge Funds Think INFO Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At Q2’s end, a total of 61 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 13% from the first quarter of 2020. On the other hand, there were a total of 44 hedge funds with a bullish position in INFO a year ago. 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, Matthew Halbower’s Pentwater Capital Management has the number one position in IHS Markit Ltd. (NYSE:INFO), worth close to $799.9 million, comprising 6.6% of its total 13F portfolio. On Pentwater Capital Management’s heels is Millennium Management, managed by Israel Englander, which holds a $508.7 million position; 0.3% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Other professional money managers with similar optimism consist of D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Sand Grove Capital Partners allocated the biggest weight to IHS Markit Ltd. (NYSE:INFO), around 18.41% of its 13F portfolio. Berry Street Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 9.92 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to INFO.
As one would reasonably expect, key hedge funds have been driving this bullishness. Soros Fund Management, managed by George Soros, created the biggest position in IHS Markit Ltd. (NYSE:INFO). Soros Fund Management had $152.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Simon Sadler’s Segantii Capital also made a $103.9 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Michel Massoud’s Melqart Asset Management, Frank Fu’s CaaS Capital, and Jeffrey Talpins’s Element Capital Management.
Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to IHS Markit Ltd. (NYSE:INFO). We will take a look at Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:A), The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation (NYSE:BK), Schlumberger Limited. (NYSE:SLB), TE Connectivity Ltd. (NYSE:TEL), BCE Inc. (NYSE:BCE), Match Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:MTCH), and Marriott International Inc (NASDAQ:MAR). This group of stocks’ market values resemble INFO’s market value.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | 39 | 3891487 | -3 |
| BK | 52 | 4907372 | 3 |
| SLB | 41 | 1067022 | -9 |
| TEL | 39 | 2134995 | 0 |
| BCE | 14 | 113288 | 4 |
| MTCH | 63 | 3368893 | -5 |
| MAR | 49 | 2454304 | -9 |
| Average | 42.4 | 2562480 | -2.7 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 42.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $2562 million. That figure was $5948 million in INFO’s case. Match Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:MTCH) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand BCE Inc. (NYSE:BCE) is the least popular one with only 14 bullish hedge fund positions. IHS Markit Ltd. (NYSE:INFO) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for INFO is 88. 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. Our calculations showed that top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 26.3% in 2021 through October 29th and still beat the market by 2.3 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on INFO as the stock returned 16.4% since the end of Q2 (through 10/29) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
