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 at Insider Monkey have plowed through 752 13F filings that hedge funds and well-known value investors are required to file by the SEC. The 13F filings show the funds' and investors' portfolio positions as of September 30th. In this article we look at what those investors think of Hawthorn Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:HWBK).
Is Hawthorn Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:HWBK) a good investment right now? The best stock pickers are betting on the stock. The number of long hedge fund positions improved by 1 recently. Our calculations also showed that HWBK isn't among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds.
If you'd ask most stock holders, hedge funds are perceived as unimportant, old financial tools of the past. While there are over 8000 funds with their doors open at the moment, We hone in on the elite of this group, about 750 funds. It is estimated that this group of investors command the lion's share of the hedge fund industry's total capital, and by tailing their unrivaled stock picks, Insider Monkey has formulated many investment strategies that have historically outpaced Mr. Market. Insider Monkey's flagship short hedge fund strategy exceeded the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points per year since its inception in May 2014. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 27.8% since February 2017 (through November 21st) even though the market was up more than 39% during the same period. We just shared a list of 7 short targets in our latest quarterly update .
Unlike the largest US hedge funds that are convinced Dow will soar past 40,000 or the world's most bearish hedge fund that's more convinced than ever that a crash is coming, our long-short investment strategy doesn't rely on bull or bear markets to deliver double digit returns. We only rely on the best performing hedge funds' buy/sell signals. We're going to take a look at the new hedge fund action regarding Hawthorn Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:HWBK).
How are hedge funds trading Hawthorn Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:HWBK)?
At Q3's end, a total of 3 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 50% from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards HWBK over the last 17 quarters. With hedge funds' sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings substantially (or already accumulated large positions).
No of Hedge Funds with HWBK Positions
Among these funds, Tontine Asset Management held the most valuable stake in Hawthorn Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:HWBK), which was worth $3.4 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was Renaissance Technologies which amassed $0.3 million worth of shares. Royce & Associates was 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 Tontine Asset Management allocated the biggest weight to Hawthorn Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:HWBK), around 0.49% of its portfolio. Royce & Associates is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.0003 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to HWBK.
As industrywide interest jumped, specific money managers have been driving this bullishness. Royce & Associates, managed by Chuck Royce, initiated the biggest position in Hawthorn Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:HWBK). Royce & Associates had $0 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter.
Let's now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Hawthorn Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:HWBK). We will take a look at Overseas Shipholding Group, Inc. (NYSE:OSG), U.S. Well Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:USWS), The GDL Fund (NYSE:GDL), and First Savings Financial Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:FSFG). This group of stocks' market caps are similar to HWBK's market cap.
[table] Ticker, No of HFs with positions, Total Value of HF Positions (x1000), Change in HF Position OSG,12,38564,0 USWS,13,11651,2 GDL,3,5578,0 FSFG,4,6140,1 Average,8,15483,0.75 [/table]
As you can see these stocks had an average of 8 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $15 million. That figure was $4 million in HWBK's case. U.S. Well Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:USWS) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand The GDL Fund (NYSE:GDL) is the least popular one with only 3 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Hawthorn Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:HWBK) is even less popular than GDL. Hedge funds dodged a bullet by taking a bearish stance towards HWBK. Our calculations showed that the top 20 most popular hedge fund stocks returned 34.7% in 2019 through November 22nd and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 8.5 percentage points. Unfortunately HWBK wasn't nearly as popular as these 20 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was very bearish); HWBK investors were disappointed as the stock returned 1.6% during the fourth quarter (through 11/22) 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 70 percent of these stocks already outperformed the market so far in Q4.
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
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