After several tireless days we have finished crunching the numbers from nearly 750 13F filings issued by the elite hedge funds and other investment firms that we track at Insider Monkey, which disclosed those firms' equity portfolios as of September 30th. The results of that effort will be put on display in this article, as we share valuable insight into the smart money sentiment towards Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S. (NYSE:TKC).
Is Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S. (NYSE:TKC) a bargain? Hedge funds are becoming less confident. The number of long hedge fund bets dropped by 2 lately. Our calculations also showed that TKC isn't among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings and see the video below for Q2 rankings). TKC was in 5 hedge funds' portfolios at the end of September. There were 7 hedge funds in our database with TKC holdings at the end of the previous quarter.
5 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds
Video: Click the image to watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.
According to most stock holders, hedge funds are viewed as slow, old investment tools of years past. While there are over 8000 funds trading at the moment, Our researchers choose to focus on the bigwigs of this group, about 750 funds. Most estimates calculate that this group of people preside over most of all hedge funds' total capital, and by paying attention to their finest picks, Insider Monkey has identified several investment strategies that have historically outrun the market. Insider Monkey's flagship short hedge fund strategy outperformed the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points a 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 .
We leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example Discover is offering this insane cashback card, so we look into shorting the stock. One of the most bullish analysts in America just put his money where his mouth is. He says, "I'm investing more today than I did back in early 2009." So we check out his pitch. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. We even check out this option genius' weekly trade ideas. This December, we recommended Adams Energy as a one-way bet based on an under-the-radar fund manager's investor letter and the stock already gained 20 percent. With all of this in mind we're going to review the recent hedge fund action regarding Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S. (NYSE:TKC).
What have hedge funds been doing with Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S. (NYSE:TKC)?
At Q3's end, a total of 5 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -29% from the second quarter of 2019. By comparison, 8 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in TKC a year ago. With hedgies' positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes considerably (or already accumulated large positions).
Is TKC A Good Stock To Buy?
The largest stake in Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S. (NYSE:TKC) was held by Arrowstreet Capital, which reported holding $4.5 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Two Sigma Advisors with a $0.6 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Citadel Investment Group, D E Shaw, and Point72 Asset Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Arrowstreet Capital allocated the biggest weight to Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S. (NYSE:TKC), around 0.01% of its 13F portfolio. Two Sigma Advisors is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 0.0014 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to TKC.
Due to the fact that Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S. (NYSE:TKC) has experienced bearish sentiment from the smart money, it's easy to see that there lies a certain "tier" of hedgies that elected to cut their entire stakes by the end of the third quarter. At the top of the heap, Randall Smith's Alden Global Capital dropped the biggest stake of the "upper crust" of funds watched by Insider Monkey, comprising close to $3.7 million in stock, and Minhua Zhang's Weld Capital Management was right behind this move, as the fund said goodbye to about $0.2 million worth. These bearish behaviors are important to note, as total hedge fund interest fell by 2 funds by the end of the third quarter.
Let's now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks - not necessarily in the same industry as Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S. (NYSE:TKC) but similarly valued. These stocks are bluebird bio Inc (NASDAQ:BLUE), ONE Gas Inc (NYSE:OGS), Globus Medical Inc (NYSE:GMED), and First Horizon National Corporation (NYSE:FHN). This group of stocks' market values resemble TKC's market value.
[table] Ticker, No of HFs with positions, Total Value of HF Positions (x1000), Change in HF Position BLUE,16,146471,-6 OGS,17,95793,3 GMED,21,258701,2 FHN,31,192889,8 Average,21.25,173464,1.75 [/table]
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 $173 million. That figure was $6 million in TKC's case. First Horizon National Corporation (NYSE:FHN) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand bluebird bio Inc (NASDAQ:BLUE) is the least popular one with only 16 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S. (NYSE:TKC) is even less popular than BLUE. Hedge funds dodged a bullet by taking a bearish stance towards TKC. Our calculations showed that the top 20 most popular hedge fund stocks returned 37.4% in 2019 through the end of November and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 9.9 percentage points. Unfortunately TKC wasn't nearly as popular as these 20 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was very bearish); TKC investors were disappointed as the stock returned 5.6% during the fourth quarter (through the end of November) 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.
