What Successful Investors Have to Say About PrivateBancorp Inc (PVTB)

The Insider Monkey team has completed processing the quarterly 13F filings for the September quarter submitted by the hedge funds and other money managers included in our extensive database. Most hedge funds have been producing disappointing net returns in recent years, however that was partly due to the poor performance of small-cap stocks in general. Well, small-cap stocks finally turned the corner and have been beating the large-cap stocks by more than 10 percentage points over the last 5 months.This means the relevancy of hedge funds’ public filings became inarguable, as they may reveal numerous high-potential stocks. The following article will discuss the smart money sentiment towards PrivateBancorp Inc (NASDAQ:PVTB).

PrivateBancorp Inc (NASDAQ:PVTB) was in 23 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2016. PVTB has experienced a decrease in support from the world’s most elite money managers recently. There were 26 hedge funds in our database with PVTB positions at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare PVTB to other stocks including ViaSat, Inc. (NASDAQ:VSAT), HEALTHSOUTH Corp. (NYSE:HLS), and Leidos Holdings Inc (NYSE:LDOS) to get a better sense of its popularity.

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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Hedge fund activity in PrivateBancorp Inc (NASDAQ:PVTB)

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 23 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a 12% fall from the second quarter of 2016, giving back some of the big Q2 gains. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Neil Chriss’ Hutchin Hill Capital has the biggest position in PrivateBancorp Inc (NASDAQ:PVTB), worth close to $110.4 million, accounting for 2.3% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Magnetar Capital, led by Alec Litowitz and Ross Laser, holding a $108.5 million position; the fund has 1.7% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish encompass Clint Carlson’s Carlson Capital, Robert Emil Zoellner’s Alpine Associates and Paul Tudor Jones’ Tudor Investment Corp.

Judging by the fact that PrivateBancorp Inc (NASDAQ:PVTB) has faced bearish sentiment from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, we can see that there was a specific group of fund managers that decided to sell off their full holdings in the third quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management dumped the largest position of all the hedgies tracked by Insider Monkey, valued at an estimated $61.3 million in stock, and Principal Global Investors’ Columbus Circle Investors was right behind this move, as the fund dumped about $52.7 million worth of shares. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest fell by 3 funds in the third quarter.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as PrivateBancorp Inc (NASDAQ:PVTB) but similarly valued. These stocks are ViaSat, Inc. (NASDAQ:VSAT), HEALTHSOUTH Corp. (NYSE:HLS), Leidos Holdings Inc (NYSE:LDOS), and ONE Gas Inc (NYSE:OGS). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble PVTB’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 20.25 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $783 million. That figure was $551 million in PVTB’s case. Leidos Holdings Inc (NYSE:LDOS) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand ONE Gas Inc (NYSE:OGS) is the least popular one with only 11 bullish hedge fund positions. PrivateBancorp Inc (NASDAQ:PVTB) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard LDOS might be a better candidate to consider a long position in.

Disclosure: None