Published on 4 Oct 2021 on Insider Monkey via Yahoo Finance

Hedge Funds Are Selling WestAmerica Bancorp. (WABC)

Out of thousands of stocks that are currently traded on the market, it is difficult to identify those that will really generate strong returns. Hedge funds and institutional investors spend millions of dollars on analysts with MBAs and PhDs, who are industry experts and well connected to other industry and media insiders on top of that. Individual investors can piggyback the hedge funds employing these talents and can benefit from their vast resources and knowledge in that way. We analyze quarterly 13F filings of nearly 900 hedge funds and, by looking at the smart money sentiment that surrounds a stock, we can determine whether it has the potential to beat the market over the long-term. Therefore, let’s take a closer look at what smart money thinks about WestAmerica Bancorp. (NASDAQ:WABC).

WestAmerica Bancorp. (NASDAQ:WABC) shareholders have witnessed a decrease in enthusiasm from smart money of late. WestAmerica Bancorp. (NASDAQ:WABC) was in 10 hedge funds' portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistic is 14. There were 13 hedge funds in our database with WABC positions at the end of the first quarter. Our calculations also showed that WABC isn't among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).

Why do we pay any attention at all to hedge fund sentiment? Our research has shown that a select group of hedge fund holdings outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by 79 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). That's why we believe hedge fund sentiment is an extremely useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.