The 800+ hedge funds and famous money managers tracked by Insider Monkey have already compiled and submitted their 13F filings for the fourth quarter, which unveil their equity positions as of December 31st. We went through these filings, fixed typos and other more significant errors and identified the changes in hedge fund portfolios. Our extensive review of these public filings is finally over, so this article is set to reveal the smart money sentiment towards Visa Inc (NYSE:V). We will also compare Visa against similarly valued stocks like Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM), Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA), and The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS).
Is V stock a buy or sell? Visa Inc (NYSE:V) has seen an increase in hedge fund sentiment in recent months. Visa Inc (NYSE:V) was in 166 hedge funds' portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistic was previously 160. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. There were 160 hedge funds in our database with V holdings at the end of September. Our calculations also showed that V ranked 5th among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q4 rankings).
Hedge funds' reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn't keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Our research was able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 124 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here).
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Do Hedge Funds Think V Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At the end of December, a total of 166 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 4% from the third quarter of 2020. By comparison, 143 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in V a year ago. So, let's find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
Is V A Good Stock To Buy?
The largest stake in Visa Inc (NYSE:V) was held by Fisher Asset Management, which reported holding $4860.3 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Berkshire Hathaway with a $2184.6 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Fundsmith LLP, Akre Capital Management, and GQG Partners. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Truvvo Partners allocated the biggest weight to Visa Inc (NYSE:V), around 29.28% of its 13F portfolio. Hengistbury Investment Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 25.02 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to V.
As one would reasonably expect, some big names have jumped into Visa Inc (NYSE:V) headfirst. Rokos Capital Management, managed by Chris Rokos, initiated the most valuable position in Visa Inc (NYSE:V). Rokos Capital Management had $58.9 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Richard Driehaus's Driehaus Capital also made a $56.2 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new V positions are Jack Woodruff's Candlestick Capital Management, Leon Shaulov's Maplelane Capital, and Anthony Joseph Vaccarino's North Fourth Asset Management.
Let's also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks - not necessarily in the same industry as Visa Inc (NYSE:V) but similarly valued. These stocks are Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ), Walmart Inc. (NYSE:WMT), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM), Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA), The Procter & Gamble Company (NYSE:PG), UnitedHealth Group Inc. (NYSE:UNH), and The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS). All of these stocks' market caps are similar to V's market cap.
[table] Ticker, No of HFs with positions, Total Value of HF Positions (x1000), Change in HF Position JNJ,81,5820696,-1 WMT,70,6197019,1 JPM,112,6967178,-6 MA,154,17978734,21 PG,83,10421985,8 UNH,91,10778450,2 DIS,144,16417240,32 Average,105,10654472,8.1 [/table]
As you can see these stocks had an average of 105 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $10654 million. That figure was $23599 million in V's case. Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Walmart Inc. (NYSE:WMT) is the least popular one with only 70 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Visa Inc (NYSE:V) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for V is 98. 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 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 81.2% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 26 percentage points. These stocks gained 5.3% in 2021 through March 19th and still beat the market by 0.8 percentage points. Unfortunately V wasn't nearly as successful as these 30 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on V were disappointed as the stock returned -5.3% since the end of the fourth quarter (through 3/19) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the more diversified list of the top 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
