How do you pick the next stock to invest in? One way would be to spend hours of research browsing through thousands of publicly traded companies. However, an easier way is to look at the stocks that smart money investors are collectively bullish on. Hedge funds and other institutional investors usually invest large amounts of capital and have to conduct due diligence while choosing their next pick. They don’t always get it right, but, on average, their stock picks historically generated strong returns after adjusting for known risk factors. With this in mind, let’s take a look at the recent hedge fund activity surrounding Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. (NYSE:ARE).
Hedge fund interest in Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. shares was flat at the end of last quarter. This is usually a negative indicator. At the end of this article we will also compare ARE to other stocks including The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company (NASDAQ:GT), The AES Corporation (NYSE:AES), and Pinnacle West Capital Corporation (NYSE:PNW) to get a better sense of its popularity.
We follow over 700 hedge funds and other institutional investors and by analyzing their quarterly 13F filings, we identify stocks that they are collectively bullish on and develop investment strategies based on this data. One strategy that outperformed the market over the last year involves selecting the 100 best-performing funds and identifying the 30 mid-cap stocks that they are collectively most bullish on. Over the past year, this strategy generated returns of 18%, topping the 8% gain registered by S&P 500 ETFs. We launched this strategy 2.5 years ago and it returned more than 39% since then, vs. 22% gain registered by the S&P 500 ETFs.
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Now, let’s take a look at the recent action encompassing Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc.
How are hedge funds trading Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc.?
At the end of the third quarter, a total of 11 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, unchanged from the second quarter of 2016. On the other hand, there were a total of 12 hedge funds with a bullish position in ARE at the beginning of this year. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).
