Do Hedge Funds Love Investors Real Estate Trust (CSR)?

Beth McCandry

After several tireless days, we evaluated the numbers from nearly 900 13F filings from elite hedge funds and other investment firms we track at Insider Monkey that disclosed these firms’ stock portfolios as of March 31st. The results of these efforts are presented in this article as we provide valuable insight into the smart money sentiment towards Investors Real Estate Trust (NYSE: CSR).

Investors Real Estate Trust (NYSE: CSR) was in the portfolios of 5 hedge funds at the end of March. The all-time high for this statistic is 7. CSR investors should be aware of the declining activity of the world’s largest hedge funds recently. At the end of December there were 7 hedge funds with CSR stocks in our database. Our calculations also showed that CSR is not in the top 30 most popular stocks in hedge funds (click for Q1 ranking).

Why are we even paying attention to hedge fund sentiment? Our research has shown that a select group of hedge fund holdings outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by 115 percentage points since March 2017 (see details here). Because of this, we believe that hedge fund sentiment is an extremely useful indicator that investors should look out for.

Dmitry Balyasny from Balyasny Asset Management

Dmitry Balyasny from Balyasny Asset Management

At Insider Monkey, we search multiple sources to discover the next great investment idea. For example, an activist hedge fund owns nearly 40% of that $ 23 biotech stock and try to buy the rest for around $ 50. We have therefore recommended a long position to our subscribers to the monthly premium newsletter. We go over lists like the top 10 battery stocks to pick the next Tesla to deliver 10x the return. While we recommend positions in just a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we review as many stocks as possible. We read letters from hedge fund investors and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our homepage. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the top hedge fund promotions around Investors Real Estate Trust (NYSE: CSR).

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Do hedge funds believe CSR is a good stock to buy now?

At the beginning of the second quarter of 2021, a total of 5 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of -29% from the fourth quarter of 2020. This compares with 0 hedge funds holding stocks or a bullish call options in CSR a year ago. So let’s take a look at which hedge funds were among the top keepers in the stock and which hedge funds were making big strides.

Specifically, Renaissance Technologies was the largest shareholder in Investors Real Estate Trust (NYSE: CSR) with a stake of $ 41.4 million reported as of the end of March. Renaissance Technologies was followed by Balyasny Asset Management, which acquired a stake worth $ 1.1 million. Citadel Investment Group, Citadel Investment Group, and Two Sigma Advisors also liked the stock very much and became one of the company’s largest hedge fund owners. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position, Renaissance Technologies gave Investors Real Estate Trust (NYSE: CSR) the largest weight, approximately 0.05% of its 13F portfolio. Balyasny Asset Management is also relatively bullish on the stock, spending 0.01 percent of its 13F stock portfolio on CSR.

Judging by the fact that Investors Real Estate Trust (NYSE: CSR) has seen bearish sentiment among hedge fund managers, it’s easy to see that there is a sect of hedge funds that gave up all of their holdings in the first quarter. Interestingly, Michael Geland’s ExodusPoint Capital sold the largest position of the 750 funds, followed by Insider Monkey, with a total holding estimated at $ 0.5 million. David Harding’s fund, Winton Capital Management, also trimmed its shares, valued at approximately $ 0.4 million. This bearish behavior is interesting given that overall interest in hedge funds fell by 2 funds in the first quarter.

Now let’s look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Investors Real Estate Trust (NYSE: CSR). Those stocks are Epizyme Inc (NASDAQ: EPZM), Connect Biopharma Holdings Limited (NASDAQ: CNTB), Aegion Corp (NASDAQ: AEGN), Resolute Forest Products Inc (NYSE: RFP), World Acceptance Corp. (NASDAQ: WRLD), Quanex Building Products Corporation (NYSE: NX), and NeoGames SA (NASDAQ: NGMS). The market valuations of this group of stocks are closest to the market valuation of CSR.

[table] Ticker, number of HRs with positions, total value of HR positions (x1000), change in HR position EPZM, 16.191204, -2 CNTB, 15.103027.15 AEGN, ​​19.96207.8 RFP, 16.367339, 1 WRLD, 7.105380, -4 NX, 15.85585.2 NGMS, 9.52946, -5 average, 9/13/143098.2.1 [/table]

View the table here if you have formatting problems.

As you can see, these stocks had an average of 13.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $ 143 million. In the case of CSR, that number was $ 44 million. Aegion Corp (NASDAQ: AEGN) is the most popular stock on this table. On the other hand, World Acceptance Corp. (NASDAQ: WRLD) the least popular with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks, Investors Real Estate Trust (NYSE: CSR) is even less popular than WRLD. Our hedge fund sentiment score for CSR is 24.4 overall. Stocks with a higher number of hedge fund positions relative to other stocks and relative to their historical range receive a higher sentiment score. Hedge funds clearly dropped the ball on CSR as the stock delivered strong returns, although consensus hedge fund picks were still generating respectable returns. Our calculations showed that the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, outperforming the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks rose 17.4% in 2021 through June 18, still outperforming the market by 6.1 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right when it came to CSR betting, as the stock returned 12.3% since the first quarter (through June 18) and outperformed the market even more.

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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published on Insider Monkey.

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