Our flagship small-cap hedge fund strategy returned 275.3% since its inception in May 2014 (through May 20th, 2024) vs. 125.2% gain for its benchmark (50% S&P 500 index ETF (SPY) and 50% Russell 2000 ETF (IWM)) during the same period. Our stock picks beat their benchmark by 150 percentage points.
We aren’t like those deceitful newsletter marketers who try to separate mom-and-pop investors from their hard-earned dollars by highlighting only the incredible returns of some of their recommendations. The majority of active fund managers can’t beat the market once their fees are accounted for. In fact, most investment professionals, including your financial advisor who charges a 1% annual fee, can’t outperform the market. Passive index fund investors have already abandoned the idea of beating the market.
If beating the market is so darn difficult, what makes us think that we can do it?
Our research director has a Ph.D. in financial economics, and he has been doing quantitative stock research for more than two decades analyzing the performance of corporate insiders who have access to valuable information that you don’t.
He has also been analyzing the quarterly 13F filings made by almost all of the active and dead hedge funds covering the 18-year period between 1999 and 2017. His research revealed that ordinary investors could have outperformed the S&P 500 index by imitating the consensus stock picks of the top 100 best performing hedge funds.
Our thesis is very simple.
Hedge funds are strongly incentivized to outperform the market. Some hedge fund managers make billions of dollars in a single year if they generate decent returns. They hire the smartest students graduating from the best universities in the world. They hire those students’ professors; they hire the top experts and consultants in the field to gain just a tiny edge over other investors – including you. And sometimes they cheat and get their hands on illegal inside information. However, we think that hedge funds are more likely to get an edge over ordinary investors in small-cap stocks because these stocks aren’t well-covered and well-researched by a lot of investors. So, we formed our thesis:
When several talented hedge fund managers buy the same stocks independent of each other, those stocks should outperform the market on average.
This is a very simple and intuitive thesis. Think about it. If hedge funds can’t beat the market by picking under-researched small-cap stocks, they sure can’t beat the market by picking large cap stocks that are followed by everyone.
However, our 10-year long track record shows that hedge funds’ small and large-cap stock picks more than doubled the return of their benchmarks.
There aren’t any gimmicks.
We pick 7 small-cap stocks and 7 large-cap stocks every quarter and invest equal amounts in each position. In order for you to evaluate whether this strategy is the right one for you, we will share ALL of OUR stock picks for the following four quarters.
Quarter 1 (Published on November 15, 2022): Our Best Performing Hedge Funds Strategy outperformed its benchmark by 10.9 percentage points in 3 months.
Stock | Return |
|---|---|
Best Performing Hedge Funds Strategy Return | 15.2% |
S&P 500 ETF (SPY) Return | 4.4% |
Russell 2000 ETF Return (IWM) | 4.2% |
1. Builders FirstSource Inc. (BLDR) | 30.8% |
2. Flex Ltd. (FLEX) | 22.1% |
3. TechnipFMC plc (FTI) | 14.6% |
4. Meritage Homes Corporation (MTH) | 35.8% |
5. IAC Inc. (IAC) | 10.6% |
6. NOV Inc. (NOV) | -2.4% |
7. WEX Inc. (WEX) | 21.3% |
8. Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) | 2.2% |
9. Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) | 11.9% |
10. Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) | -1.5% |
11. Meta Platforms Inc. (META) | 51.3% |
12. Visa Inc. (V) | 9.2% |
13. Alphabet Inc. (GOOG) | -1.6% |
14. Mastercard Incorporated (MA) | 7.8% |
Quarter 2 (Published on February 15, 2023): Our Best Performing Hedge Funds Strategy outperformed its benchmark by 11.1 percentage points in 3 months.
Stock | Return |
|---|---|
Best Performing Hedge Funds Strategy Return | 6.9% |
S&P 500 ETF (SPY) Return | 0.7% |
Russell 2000 ETF Return (IWM) | -9.1% |
1. Flex Ltd. (FLEX) | -2.4% |
2. Builders FirstSource Inc. (BLDR) | 43.4% |
3. Caesers Entertainment (CZR) | -19.4% |
4. IAC Inc. (IAC) | 4.3% |
5. Noble Corporation (NE) | -13.7% |
6. TechnipFMC plc (FTI) | -5.2% |
7. NOV Inc. (NOV) | -34.7% |
8. Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) | 14.2% |
9. Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) | 16.9% |
10. Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) | 24.7% |
11. Meta Platforms Inc. (META) | 36.9% |
12. Visa Inc. (V) | 1.8% |
13. Alphabet Inc. (GOOG) | 25.1% |
14. Mastercard Incorporated (MA) | 4.9% |
Quarter 3 (Published on May 17, 2023): Our Best Performing Hedge Funds Strategy outperformed its benchmark by 2.5 percentage points in 3 months.
Stock | Return |
|---|---|
Best Performing Hedge Funds Strategy Return | 9.6% |
S&P 500 ETF (SPY) Return | 7.1% |
Russell 2000 ETF Return (IWM) | 7.1% |
1. National Instruments (NATI) | 2.2% |
2. Tenet Healthcare (THC) | 0.9% |
3. TEGNA Inc (TGNA) | 4.5% |
4. Weatherford International (WFRD) | 47.9% |
5. Clarivate Plc (CLVT) | -5.0% |
6. Berry Global (BERY) | 11.9% |
7. Axalta Coating Systems (AXTA) | -8.7% |
8. Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) | 19.2% |
9. Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) | 2.5% |
10. Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) | 7.4% |
11. Meta Platforms Inc. (META) | 24.5% |
12. Visa Inc. (V) | 3.3% |
13. Alphabet Inc. (GOOG) | 7.2% |
14. Uber Technologies (UBER) | 16.5% |
Quarter 4 (Published on August 15, 2023): Our Best Performing Hedge Funds Strategy outperformed its benchmark by 2.6 percentage points in 3 months.
Stock | Return |
|---|---|
Best Performing Hedge Funds Strategy Return | 1.3% |
S&P 500 ETF (SPY) Return | 1.9% |
Russell 2000 ETF Return (IWM) | -4.5% |
1. Black Knight (BKI) | 1.7% |
2. First Horizon Corporation (FHN) | -1.3% |
3. MasTec Inc (MTZ) | -42.8% |
4. Berry Global (BERY) | -6.0% |
5. Southwestern Energy (SWN) | 7.2% |
6. Axalta Coating Systems (AXTA) | 11.0% |
7. WESCO International (WCC) | -4.3% |
8. Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) | 15.3% |
9. Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) | 4.0% |
10. Meta Platforms Inc. (META) | 10.2% |
11. Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) | 3.7% |
12. NVIDIA (NVDA) | 11.3% |
13. Visa Inc. (V) | 3.7% |
14. Alphabet Inc. (GOOG) | 4.7% |
If, after spending a little time absorbing our past record and our current recommendations, you aren’t convinced Insider Monkey’s Best Performing Hedge Funds Strategy will change forever how you invest your money, you can tell us within the first 30 days and we’ll refund your money, no questions asked.
Insider Monkey’s quarterly newsletter is a comprehensive hedge fund report that analyzes 13F filings from more than 900 hedge funds and shares hedge funds’ best small and large-cap long investment ideas as well as best stocks to short.
More than 70 pages in length, the premium newsletter also covers top mid-cap and micro-cap hedge fund stock picks, in-depth analysis of 25 billionaire hedge fund managers and their best stock picks, most concentrated positions among hedge funds, and high conviction picks of value hedge funds.
What separates our quarterly newsletter is the superior performance of its long and short stock picks.
As a Premium newsletter member you’ll also be entitled to our list of most popular battleground stocks. Ordinary investors can benefit from this list by avoiding or shorting these stocks. Professional investors can benefit by shorting them. These stocks underperformed the S&P 500 Index by more than 231 percentage points since the beginning of September 2012 (through February 16, 2024).
Best Stocks To Short
This is a quantitative investment strategy that lists 5 to 10 small-cap stocks every quarter with a large number of long hedge funds and a large percent of short sellers. These are the most popular battleground stocks. Historically short sellers won most of these battles.
We have been sharing a list of short candidates every quarter since February 2017 and these stocks returned a cumulative 50.3% through May 20, 2024. S&P 500 Index ETF (SPY) returned 155.1% during the same period. Basically, our short strategy beat the market by 104.8 percentage points in 7 years.
For a limited time, we have a 30-day no questions asked money back guarantee option.
SEE OUR LATEST STOCK PICKS
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Frequently Asked Questions
1. How many issues do you produce in a year, and when are they typically released?
Our primary premium newsletter is produced quarterly and is published around February 14th, May 15th, August 14th, and November 14th of each year.
2. Do you offer any other services besides the quarterly newsletter?
We also publish a monthly activist newsletter, which costs $499 per year with an annual subscription. In each monthly newsletter, a top-tier hedge fund manager is interviewed and/or analyzed, and 1-2 novel investment ideas are shared.
3. What would I get if I were to subscribe?
Premium newsletter members will receive access to our investment strategies.
More than 70 pages in length, the premium newsletter also covers our small-cap hedge fund strategy’s stock picks, in-depth analysis of 23 billionaire hedge fund managers and their best stock picks, most concentrated positions among hedge funds, stocks dumped by hedge funds, high conviction picks of value hedge funds, and excerpts from hedge fund investor letters.
4. Does your newsletter give alerts on when to buy and sell and the position percentages of one’s portfolio?
Each quarter we show our subscribers what to sell, what to buy, and what to maintain in their portfolios, within the confines of our strategies.
5. Is there a trial period for your services?
All new premium members receive a partial refund if cancelled within 30 days of purchase. Unfortunately, we don’t offer refunds if you previously subscribed to and cancelled a subscription.
6. Can I cancel after 30 days?
After the 30-day trial period, membership is final for four quarterly issues, i.e., one full year.
7. So how many issues do I actually receive? Does a membership include past quarterly reports too?
Yes. If you are subscribed to our quarterly newsletter you will receive access to all archived issues and 4 new issues over the next 12 months. If you are subscribed to our monthly newsletter you won’t have access to our archived issues.
8. What sized companies do you focus on?
The list of stocks we focus on in our small-cap strategies has market values between $1 billion and $10 billion. There is no market cap limit in our large-cap strategy (except a minimum of $20 billion).
9. Do you guarantee that I can beat the market by following your strategy?
No. Our strategy outperformed the market in the past and in our backtests. However, this doesn’t guarantee that it will outperform the market in the future and on a consistent basis. Professional investors know that there aren’t any stock picking strategies that can beat the market consistently.
10. How can I pay for Insider Monkey’s premium services?
Premium subscribers may pay via Bitcoin, Ethereum, Paypal, check, or credit card.
