Is CoreSite Realty Corp (COR) A Good Stock To Buy?

Abigail Fisher

Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 6:35 PM

The government requires hedge funds and wealthy investors that crossed the $100 million equity holdings threshold are required to file a report that shows their positions at the end of every quarter. Even though it isn't the intention, these filings level the playing field for ordinary investors. The latest round of 13F filings disclosed the funds' positions on March 31. We at Insider Monkey have made an extensive database of nearly 750 of those elite funds and famous investors' filings. In this article, we analyze how these elite funds and prominent investors traded CoreSite Realty Corp (NYSE:COR) based on those filings.

CoreSite Realty Corp (NYSE:COR) investors should be aware of a decrease in support from the world's most elite money managers in recent months. Our calculations also showed that COR isn't among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds.

In the eyes of most traders, hedge funds are perceived as worthless, old financial tools of years past. While there are greater than 8000 funds in operation at present, Our researchers choose to focus on the moguls of this group, around 750 funds. These money managers command the majority of the smart money's total capital, and by watching their finest investments, Insider Monkey has figured out many investment strategies that have historically exceeded Mr. Market. Insider Monkey's flagship hedge fund strategy outperformed the S&P 500 index by around 5 percentage points per annum since its inception in May 2014 through June 18th. We were able to generate large returns even by identifying short candidates. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 28.2% since February 2017 (through June 18th) even though the market was up nearly 30% during the same period. We just shared a list of 5 short targets in our latest quarterly update and they are already down an average of 8.2% in a month whereas our long picks outperformed the market by 2.5 percentage points in this volatile 5 week period (our long picks also beat the market by 15 percentage points so far this year).

We're going to take a look at the fresh hedge fund action surrounding CoreSite Realty Corp (NYSE:COR).

How are hedge funds trading CoreSite Realty Corp (NYSE:COR)?

Heading into the second quarter of 2019, a total of 13 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -13% from the fourth quarter of 2018. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards COR over the last 15 quarters. With the smart money's capital changing hands, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in CoreSite Realty Corp (NYSE:COR) was held by Renaissance Technologies, which reported holding $115.4 million worth of stock at the end of March. It was followed by Citadel Investment Group with a $27.9 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Fisher Asset Management, Millennium Management, and Two Sigma Advisors.

Judging by the fact that CoreSite Realty Corp (NYSE:COR) has witnessed a decline in interest from the aggregate hedge fund industry, we can see that there lies a certain "tier" of hedgies who sold off their entire stakes by the end of the third quarter. Interestingly, Dmitry Balyasny's Balyasny Asset Management dumped the largest stake of the "upper crust" of funds watched by Insider Monkey, worth close to $6.4 million in stock. Matthew Hulsizer's fund, PEAK6 Capital Management, also dumped its stock, about $3.4 million worth. These transactions are interesting, as total hedge fund interest was cut by 2 funds by the end of the third quarter.

Let's check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to CoreSite Realty Corp (NYSE:COR). These stocks are First Financial Bankshares Inc (NASDAQ:FFIN), Verint Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:VRNT), Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. (NASDAQ:CBRL), and Avalara, Inc. (NYSE:AVLR). This group of stocks' market valuations match COR's market valuation.

[table] Ticker, No of HFs with positions, Total Value of HF Positions (x1000), Change in HF Position FFIN,13,32742,7 VRNT,22,370064,4 CBRL,23,144940,4 AVLR,27,889800,13 Average,21.25,359387,7 [/table]

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 21.25 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $359 million. That figure was $226 million in COR's case. Avalara, Inc. (NYSE:AVLR) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand First Financial Bankshares Inc (NASDAQ:FFIN) is the least popular one with only 13 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks CoreSite Realty Corp (NYSE:COR) is even less popular than FFIN. Hedge funds clearly dropped the ball on COR as the stock delivered strong returns, though hedge funds' consensus picks still generated respectable returns. Our calculations showed that top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 6.2% in Q2 through June 19th and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by nearly 3 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on COR as the stock returned 9.7% during the same period and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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

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