Where Do Hedge Funds Stand On Bel Fuse, Inc. (BELFA)?

Our extensive research has shown that imitating the smart money can generate significant returns for retail investors, which is why we track nearly 900 active prominent money managers and analyze their quarterly 13F filings. The stocks that are heavily bought by hedge funds historically outperformed the market, though there is no shortage of high profile failures like hedge funds’ 2018 losses in Facebook and Apple. Let’s take a closer look at what the funds we track think about Bel Fuse, Inc. (NASDAQ:BELFA) in this article.

Hedge fund interest in Bel Fuse, Inc. (NASDAQ:BELFA) shares was flat at the end of last quarter. This is usually a negative indicator. Our calculations also showed that BELFA isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings). At the end of this article we will also compare BELFA to other stocks including IMAC Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:IMAC), Sonnet BioTherapeutics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:SONN), and Medley Management Inc (NYSE:MDLY) to get a better sense of its popularity.

Why do we pay any attention at all to hedge fund sentiment? Our research has shown that a select group of hedge fund holdings outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by 115 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is an extremely useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital Management

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

At first quarter’s end, a total of 4 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 0% from the fourth quarter of 2020. By comparison, 4 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in BELFA a year ago. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of notable hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Mario Gabelli’s GAMCO Investors has the biggest position in Bel Fuse, Inc. (NASDAQ:BELFA), worth close to $3.6 million, amounting to less than 0.1%% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital Management, with a $1.3 million position; less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Some other hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish encompass Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates, Renaissance Technologies and . In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position GAMCO Investors allocated the biggest weight to Bel Fuse, Inc. (NASDAQ:BELFA), around 0.03% of its 13F portfolio. Oaktree Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.02 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to BELFA.

Earlier we told you that the aggregate hedge fund interest in the stock was unchanged and we view this as a negative development. Even though there weren’t any hedge funds dumping their holdings during the third quarter, there weren’t any hedge funds initiating brand new positions. This indicates that hedge funds, at the very best, perceive this stock as dead money and they haven’t identified any viable catalysts that can attract investor attention.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Bel Fuse, Inc. (NASDAQ:BELFA). We will take a look at IMAC Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:IMAC), Sonnet BioTherapeutics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:SONN), Medley Management Inc (NYSE:MDLY), Positive Physicians Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PPHI), Duos Technologies Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:DUOT), The OLB Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:OLB), and Cincinnati Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:CNNB). This group of stocks’ market valuations are closest to BELFA’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 1.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1 million. That figure was $7 million in BELFA’s case. IMAC Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:IMAC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Sonnet BioTherapeutics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:SONN) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Bel Fuse, Inc. (NASDAQ:BELFA) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for BELFA is 85. 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 17.2% in 2021 through June 11th and still beat the market by 3.3 percentage points. Unfortunately BELFA wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on BELFA were disappointed as the stock returned -19.5% since the end of the first quarter (through 6/11) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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