Hedge Funds Have Never Been This Bullish On Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste (ASR)
Coronavirus is probably the #1 concern in investors' minds right now. It should be. On February 27th we published an article with the title Recession is Imminent: We Need A Travel Ban NOW. We predicted that a US recession is imminent and US stocks will go down by at least 20% in the next 3-6 months. We also told you to short the market ETFs and buy long-term bonds. Investors who agreed with us and replicated these trades are up double digits whereas the market is down double digits. Our article also called for a total international travel ban to prevent the spread of the coronavirus especially from Europe. We were one step ahead of the markets and the president (see why hell is coming).
In these volatile markets we scrutinize hedge fund filings to get a reading on which direction each stock might be going. The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. We have processed the filings of the more than 835 world-class investment firms that we track and now have access to the collective wisdom contained in these filings, which are based on their December 31 holdings, data that is available nowhere else. Should you consider Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste (NYSE:ASR) for your portfolio? We'll look to this invaluable collective wisdom for the answer.
Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste (NYSE:ASR) investors should be aware of an increase in hedge fund sentiment of late. Our calculations also showed that ASR isn't among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q4 rankings and see the video at the end of this article for Q3 rankings).
In the financial world there are a lot of gauges shareholders employ to evaluate publicly traded companies. A duo of the most useful gauges are hedge fund and insider trading signals. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the elite fund managers can beat the market by a superb margin (see the details here).
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Paul Marshall of Marshall Wace[/caption]
We leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, we believe electric vehicles and energy storage are set to become giant markets, and we want to take advantage of the declining lithium prices amid the COVID-19 pandemic. So we are checking out investment opportunities like this one. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. Our best call in 2020 was shorting the market when S&P 500 was trading at 3150 after realizing the coronavirus pandemic's significance before most investors. With all of this in mind let's take a look at the new hedge fund action surrounding Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste (NYSE:ASR).
How are hedge funds trading Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste (NYSE:ASR)?
At Q4's end, a total of 10 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 150% from the third quarter of 2019. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in ASR over the last 18 quarters. So, let's find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
Among these funds, Renaissance Technologies held the most valuable stake in Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste (NYSE:ASR), which was worth $45.1 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was Arrowstreet Capital which amassed $5.8 million worth of shares. Teewinot Capital Advisers, AQR Capital Management, and Qtron Investments 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 Teewinot Capital Advisers allocated the biggest weight to Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste (NYSE:ASR), around 1.38% of its 13F portfolio. Qtron Investments is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 0.46 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ASR.
As aggregate interest increased, some big names were leading the bulls' herd. Arrowstreet Capital, managed by Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell, created the biggest position in Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste (NYSE:ASR). Arrowstreet Capital had $5.8 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Ronald Hua's Qtron Investments also made a $0.8 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Donald Sussman's Paloma Partners, Michael Gelband's ExodusPoint Capital, and Paul Marshall and Ian Wace's Marshall Wace LLP.
Let's check out hedge fund activity in other stocks - not necessarily in the same industry as Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste (NYSE:ASR) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Cemex SAB de CV (NYSE:CX), New York Community Bancorp, Inc. (NYSE:NYCB), National Instruments Corporation (NASDAQ:NATI), and EPR Properties (NYSE:EPR). This group of stocks' market caps match ASR's market cap.
[table] Ticker, No of HFs with positions, Total Value of HF Positions (x1000), Change in HF Position CX,13,89214,2 NYCB,27,214458,0 NATI,30,295238,3 EPR,24,227647,1 Average,23.5,206639,1.5 [/table]
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 23.5 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $207 million. That figure was $61 million in ASR's case. National Instruments Corporation (NASDAQ:NATI) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Cemex SAB de CV (NYSE:CX) is the least popular one with only 13 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste (NYSE:ASR) is even less popular than CX. Hedge funds dodged a bullet by taking a bearish stance towards ASR. Our calculations showed that the top 20 most popular hedge fund stocks returned 41.3% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10.1 percentage points. These stocks lost 13.0% in 2020 through April 6th but managed to beat the market by 4.2 percentage points. Unfortunately ASR wasn't nearly as popular as these 20 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was very bearish); ASR investors were disappointed as the stock returned -53% during the same time period and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market so far in 2020.
Video: Click the image to watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
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