Were Hedge Funds Right About Warming Up To DISH Network Corp. (DISH)?

Before we spend countless hours researching a company, we like to analyze what insiders, hedge funds and billionaire investors think of the stock first. This is a necessary first step in our investment process because our research has shown that the elite investors’ consensus returns have been exceptional. In the following paragraphs, we find out what the billionaire investors and hedge funds think of DISH Network Corp. (NASDAQ:DISH).

DISH Network Corp. (NASDAQ:DISH) shareholders have witnessed an increase in hedge fund interest of late. DISH Network Corp. (NASDAQ:DISH) was in 54 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistics is 58. There were 44 hedge funds in our database with DISH holdings at the end of March. Our calculations also showed that DISH isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks).

Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

According to most investors, hedge funds are viewed as underperforming, old financial tools of the past. While there are more than 8000 funds trading at the moment, Our experts look at the moguls of this group, around 850 funds. These investment experts direct the majority of all hedge funds’ total capital, and by monitoring their highest performing investments, Insider Monkey has spotted a few investment strategies that have historically outpaced the S&P 500 index. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy outperformed the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points per annum since its inception in March 2017. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 34% since February 2017 (through August 17th) even though the market was up 53% during the same period. We just shared a list of 8 short targets in our latest quarterly update .

Boykin Curry of Eagle Capital

At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. Hedge fund sentiment towards Tesla reached its all time high at the end of 2019 and Tesla shares more than quadrupled this year. We are trying to identify other EV revolution winners, so we are checking out this under-the-radar lithium stock. We go through lists like the 10 most profitable companies in the world to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. 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 website to get excerpts of these letters in your inbox. Now we’re going to view the fresh hedge fund action surrounding DISH Network Corp. (NASDAQ:DISH).

Hedge fund activity in DISH Network Corp. (NASDAQ:DISH)

At the end of June, a total of 54 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 23% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards DISH over the last 20 quarters. With hedge funds’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were adding to their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

Among these funds, King Street Capital held the most valuable stake in DISH Network Corp. (NASDAQ:DISH), which was worth $255.2 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was Jericho Capital Asset Management which amassed $234 million worth of shares. Eagle Capital Management, Palestra Capital Management, and Paulson & Co 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 Key Square Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to DISH Network Corp. (NASDAQ:DISH), around 25.66% of its 13F portfolio. King Street Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 22.56 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to DISH.

As one would reasonably expect, some big names have jumped into DISH Network Corp. (NASDAQ:DISH) headfirst. Jericho Capital Asset Management, managed by Josh Resnick, created the biggest position in DISH Network Corp. (NASDAQ:DISH). Jericho Capital Asset Management had $234 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Andrew Immerman and Jeremy Schiffman’s Palestra Capital Management also made a $188 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Brandon Haley’s Holocene Advisors, Mark Moore’s ThornTree Capital Partners, and Benjamin Pass’s TOMS Capital.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as DISH Network Corp. (NASDAQ:DISH) but similarly valued. These stocks are Chewy, Inc. (NYSE:CHWY), Delta Air Lines, Inc. (NYSE:DAL), Fortis Inc. (NYSE:FTS), PG&E Corporation (NYSE:PCG), Slack Technologies Inc (NYSE:WORK), Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:AKAM), and Ameren Corporation (NYSE:AEE). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to DISH’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 39.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1142 million. That figure was $1703 million in DISH’s case. PG&E Corporation (NYSE:PCG) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Fortis Inc. (NYSE:FTS) is the least popular one with only 8 bullish hedge fund positions. DISH Network Corp. (NASDAQ:DISH) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for DISH is 65.3. 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 positive signal but 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 41.4% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10.1 percentage points. These stocks gained 30% in 2020 through October 23rd and beat the market by 21 percentage points. Unfortunately DISH wasn’t nearly as popular as these 10 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on DISH were disappointed as the stock returned -21.1% since the end of June (through 10/23) 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 many of these stocks already outperformed the market so far this year.

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