We just heard this week from America's most famous value investor, Warren Buffett, as he talked about his strategy and the biggest names in his portfolio. Now we get a glimpse of what the rest of his cohorts are trading. According to data provided to CNBC, we see how the universe of institutional value players changed their portfolios in the past quarter.
Historically, institutional investors have been ahead of retail traders by 12 to 24 months, suggesting that these companies have more room to go.
The data comes from eVestment, a supplier of data and analytics to institutional asset managers. The company tracks and aggregates data on tens of thousands of portfolios, providing unique insight into how different types of market players operate.
Large Cap Value – Top Five Purchased
1. Tesoro
2. Las Vegas Sands
3. Wal-Mart
4. Morgan Stanley
5. General Dynamics
Large Cap Value – Top Five Sold
1. Walgreens
2. ConocoPhillips
3. Macy's
4. Phillips 66
5. Halliburton
The 10 companies mentioned might be due for significant over- or underperformance to the market in the upcoming year.
Mark Scott, an eVestment spokesman, said the data "could be illustrative of larger trends and things an investor might want to dig into a bit more when making an investment decision." He refers to its own in-house data showing that "institutional investors tend to increase and decrease their allocations to certain stocks and certain segments ahead of retail investors, so this might provide another window into what the "smart money" is doing for others interested in investing.
The collapse of oil prices has caused three energy names to make the most sold list. Even though value investors have offloaded energy stocks more than any other sector, that could still leave opportunities for other names to see a boost yet, such as Tesoro's being the most-purchased stock.
As Wal-Mart and Morgan Stanley indicate in the top five, consumer and financials have been the two sectors were we see the biggest increase in value investments.
"Since institutional investors and their money managers tend to be among the savviest and most-plugged-in investors, the data in the report is one more thing other investors might want to think about when they are considering making an investment in a company or a sector," Scott concludes,