Stocks widely owned by hedge funds are getting hit big time during the recent pullback as the funds struggle in the face of macroeconomic turmoil and, in turn, are forced to sell holdings to pay off margin calls.
This may create opportunities for retail investors to pick up some brand-name stocks for cheap, according to a report released Tuesday.
In the past three months, equity benchmarks around the world have experienced sharp losses due to global economic concerns, sending most of those indexes into correction territory, down more than 10 percent from their highs.
As stocks struggle to regain their footing, many hedge fund managers posted their worst returns since 2008 and have been forced to dramatically reduce risk, data from hedge fund database Symmetric reveals.
Fortress Investment Group was the latest casualty as the firm it was shutting its macro fund following big losses this year and that the manager of the fund, Michael Novogratz, would retire.
"Positions with a high concentration of hedge fund ownership have recently shown stress and may be under liquidation pressure," stated a Symmetric report. "Historical periods of stress, however, suggest a positive turn of events may soon be in order" for the stocks.
Since the end of the second quarter, positions with the most hedge fund ownership underperformed their respective sectors by nearly 7 percent, Symmetric data shows. These stocks tend to outperform the market by about 3.5 percent one year after similar periods of declines.
In the past 10 years, there have been only two other periods when the downdraft was steeper than 8 percent: October 2014 and during the financial crisis in 2008.
Here's a look at the 10 hedge fund holdings under the most stress that could be good buys here.
