Is ConnectOne Bancorp Inc (NASDAQ:CNOB) a good place to invest some of your money right now? We can gain invaluable insight to help us answer that question by studying the investment trends of top investors, who employ world-class Ivy League graduates, who are given immense resources and industry contacts to put their financial expertise to work. The top picks of these firms have historically outperformed the market when we account for known risk factors, making them very valuable investment ideas.

ConnectOne Bancorp Inc (NASDAQ:CNOB) investors should be aware of a decrease in hedge fund sentiment of late. CNOB was in 10 hedge funds' portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2019. There were 12 hedge funds in our database with CNOB positions at the end of the previous quarter. Our calculations also showed that CNOB 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' large-cap stock picks indeed failed to beat the market between 1999 and 2016. However, we were able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the market by 40 percentage points since May 2014 through May 30, 2019 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that'll significantly underperform the market. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 and they lost 30.9% through May 30, 2019. That's why we believe hedge fund sentiment is an extremely useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

We're going to take a look at the new hedge fund action regarding ConnectOne Bancorp Inc (NASDAQ:CNOB).

What does smart money think about ConnectOne Bancorp Inc (NASDAQ:CNOB)?

At Q1's end, a total of 10 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of -17% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 13 hedge funds with a bullish position in CNOB a year ago. So, let's review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Jim Simons's Renaissance Technologies has the most valuable position in ConnectOne Bancorp Inc (NASDAQ:CNOB), worth close to $20.8 million, corresponding to less than 0.1%% of its total 13F portfolio. On Renaissance Technologies's heels is Seidman Investment Partnership, led by Lawrence Seidman, holding a $7.7 million position; the fund has 6.3% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining peers that are bullish contain Matthew Lindenbaum's Basswood Capital, D. E. Shaw's D E Shaw and Paul Marshall and Ian Wace's Marshall Wace LLP.