Diamond Hill Capital, an investment management company, released its “Mid Cap Strategy” second-quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In Q2, markets saw a modest increase, providing favorable results in most regions and nations. In the quarter the strategy lagged the Russell Midcap Index. The relative weakness was mostly concentrated in the industrial holdings, which underperformed their index counterparts. Another area of relative weakness came from holdings in utilities and consumer discretionary. On the other hand, holdings in health care and materials were comparatively strong. The strategy returned -4.39% (gross) and -4.56% (net) in the quarter vs -3.35% for the index. In addition, you can check the top 5 holdings of the strategy to know its best picks in 2024.
Diamond Hill Mid Cap Strategy highlighted stocks like Humana Inc. (NYSE:HUM), in the second quarter 2024 investor letter. Humana Inc. (NYSE:HUM) offers medical and specialty insurance products. Humana Inc.’s (NYSE:HUM) one-month return was -12.62%, and its shares lost 26.56% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On August 27, 2024, Humana Inc. (NYSE:HUM) stock closed at $353.45 per share with a market capitalization of $42.556 billion.
Diamond Hill Mid Cap Strategy stated the following regarding Humana Inc. (NYSE:HUM) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:
“Other top Q2 contributors included Humana Inc. (NYSE:HUM) and Boston Scientific Corporation. Shares of health insurance company Humana rebounded from their recent downturn, which was tied to investors’ concerns about weaker-than-expected Medicare Advantage rates for 2025 and was the byproduct of an overall difficult operating environment.”
A closeup of an elderly patient happily receiving a specialty healthcare product.
Humana Inc. (NYSE:HUM) is not on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 71 hedge fund portfolios held Humana Inc. (NYSE:HUM) at the end of the second quarter which was 74 in the previous quarter. While we acknowledge the potential of Humana Inc. (NYSE:HUM) as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is as promising as NVIDIA but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
In another article, we discussed Humana Inc. (NYSE:HUM) and shared the list of best health insurance stocks to buy. The first quarter performance of Diamond Hill Large Cap Strategy was negatively impacted by Humana Inc. (NYSE:HUM). In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q2 2024 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.