As we already know from media reports and hedge fund investor letters, many hedge funds lost money in October, blaming macroeconomic conditions and unpredictable events that hit several sectors, with healthcare among them. Nevertheless, most investors decided to stick to their bullish theses and their long-term focus allows us to profit from the recent declines. In particular, let’s take a look at what hedge funds think about Criteo SA (NASDAQ:CRTO) in this article.

Is Criteo SA (NASDAQ:CRTO) a buy, sell, or hold? The smart money is becoming hopeful. The number of long hedge fund positions advanced by 3 recently. Our calculations also showed that CRTO isn't among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds.

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 has shown that hedge funds' small-cap stock picks managed to beat the market by double digits annually between 1999 and 2016, but the margin of outperformance has been declining in recent years. Nevertheless, we were still able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the market by 18 percentage points since May 2014 through December 3, 2018 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that underperformed the market by 10 percentage points annually between 2006 and 2017. Interestingly the margin of underperformance of these stocks has been increasing in recent years. Investors who are long the market and short these stocks would have returned more than 27% annually between 2015 and 2017. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 in our quarterly newsletter.

Let's take a peek at the fresh hedge fund action regarding Criteo SA (NASDAQ:CRTO).

What have hedge funds been doing with Criteo SA (NASDAQ:CRTO)?

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 11 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 38% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 9 hedge funds with a bullish position in CRTO at the beginning of this year. So, let's review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Among these funds, International Value Advisers held the most valuable stake in Criteo SA (NASDAQ:CRTO), which was worth $85.1 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was Citadel Investment Group which amassed $30.8 million worth of shares. Moreover, Okumus Fund Management, Point72 Asset Management, and Millennium Management were also bullish on Criteo SA (NASDAQ:CRTO), allocating a large percentage of their portfolios to this stock.