We recently compiled a list of the 8 Stocks with Lowest Short Interest to Buy. In this article, we are going to take a look at where NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) stands against the other stocks with lowest short interest to buy.
A report from S3 Partners revealed that the rally in Chinese stocks as a result of stimulus measures cost traders who were betting against the US-listed shares ~$6.9 billion in mark-to-market losses. Benchmark CSI 300 index saw an increase of more than ~22% over the past month. The Nasdaq Golden Dragon index went up by over ~34% during the same period. Much of these increases were seen off the back of policy-easing measures.
S3 Partners went on to say that, before this market rally, short sellers continued to build their positions profitably in the falling market. However, after the rebound, the short selling in the group slowed. Before China announced the stimulus plans, shorting the Chinese stocks was a popular strategy, with several market players going underweight in the sector.
Short Selling in Q2 2024
S3 Partners reported that short interest in the US/Canada markets went up by $57.9 billion, or 5.1%, to $1.20 trillion in Q2 2024. The increase comprised $73.9 billion of new short selling, which was partially offset by a $16.0 billion fall in the mark-to-market value of shares shorted. During the quarter, the sectors that saw the largest increase in short selling were the IT, Industrials, and Communication Services sectors. On the other hand, the Energy sector was the only sector that saw a decrease in shares shorted (short covering).
Short Sellers Reduced Their Positions in This Sector
S&P Global reported that short sellers decided to pull back their bets against consumer staples stocks on the US exchanges during the summer months. This comes amidst the general increase in overall short interest throughout equities. Recent data suggests that the short interest in the consumer staples sector declined to 3.87% at the end of August from 4.16% at the end of May. The decline in short interest against consumer staples stocks might be due to the decline in inflation.
On the other hand, short interest in the industrial sector went up by 21 bps from the end of May to the end of August, rose 20 basis points in the healthcare sector, and jumped 19 basis points in the real estate sector, as per the company. With the expectations of further rate cuts, market experts opine that the consumer staples sector might see sustained demand. The consumer spending resulted in solid Q2 2024 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth of 3% (annualized), approximately double the rate of Q1 growth, as per the US Bank.
After the rate cut in September, market strategists recommended going long on consumer discretionary and consumer staples sectors. This is because these sectors are expected to receive a boost as declining mortgage rates might benefit spending, reported Reuters.
Therefore, with the expectations of lower inflation and interest rates, there can be some revival in consumer confidence. This should result in increased spending on staple goods, which might lead to improved performance in the consumer staple sector. As per Evercore, among the S&P 500 sectors, consumer staples and consumer discretionary have seen the best average performance, with both sectors gaining ~14% a year after the rate cut.
Our Methodology
To list 8 Stocks with Lowest Short Interest to Buy, we used a Finviz screener to extract the list of stocks having the lowest short interest. Next, we narrowed down our list to the following 8 stocks having short interest of less than 2%. Finally, the stocks were ranked in the descending of their short interest.
Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).
A close-up of a colorful high-end graphics card being plugged in to a gaming computer.
NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA)
Short % of Float (as of September 30): 1.07%
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 179
NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) offers graphics and compute and networking solutions.
Marker experts opine that NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) continues to dominate the AI chip market space, capitalizing on its robust position in graphics processing units (GPUs) in a bid to capitalize on the growing demand for AI infrastructure. The healthy demand for the company’s Hopper GPU computing platform, together with growth in InfiniBand and Ethernet for AI revenue, should continue to fuel its financial performance over the near term.
NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA)’s CUDA software platform and system software capabilities are expected to act as primary differentiators. The company continues to focus on expanding its presence in enterprise and edge computing markets. Its AI Foundry and NIMs (NVIDIA Inference Microservices) offerings target simplifying AI rollouts for enterprises, opening up new revenue streams as and when businesses adopt AI technologies.
Despite the competitive pressures, NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA)’s technological lead and ecosystem advantages should help it maintain market leadership over the next few years. Analysts at Rosenblatt Securities reiterated a “Buy” rating on the shares of the company, issuing a $200.00 target price on 29th August.
Vltava Fund, an investment management company, recently released its Q3 2024 investor letter. Here is what the fund said:
“Over the summer, we devoted a lot of time to studying the AI-related investment wave. This spans a wide range of sectors and our view could be very briefly summarised as follows: The first-tier beneficiaries are primarily companies in the semiconductor sector, NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) perhaps the most. That company is benefiting from the huge increase in investment by large technology companies to build enormous data centres. We know who NVIDIA’s customers are. They are companies like Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft. They are investing hundreds of billions of dollars into their AI capabilities. What is not entirely clear, however, is who are and will be the customers of NVIDIA’s customers, and, more importantly, when, and if, they will be able to come up with such huge demand for AI services that the profits from AI will justify and pay for the enormous investments all these companies have been making. The further we move away from the starting point that NVIDIA represents in our more broadly-reaching estimates, the less reliable those estimates are. So far, we know just one thing for sure, and that is that investments in AI capabilities are ongoing and they are huge. They are not only bringing large demand to chipmakers and the semiconductor sector but to some other sectors as well. Indeed, building AI clusters also requires the construction of new semiconductor factories, new energy sources, and all the associated infrastructure. The numbers under consideration are incredibly high. It is possible that over the next decade the construction of AI centres will necessitate a 20% increase in US energy consumption. The investment required will be measured not in the hundreds of billions of dollars, but in an order of magnitude higher. Maybe two orders of magnitude.”
Overall NVDA ranks 5th on our list of the stocks with lowest short interest to buy. While we acknowledge the potential of NVDA as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some deeply undervalued AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for a deeply undervalued AI stock that is more promising than NVDA but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.