One of the standouts of today's morning trading session has been Alibaba, which logged a -2.5% drop and underperformed the S&P 500 by -1.0%. The Business Services stock is now trading at $88.33 per share and is -89.84% below its average target price of $869.17. Analysts have set target prices ranging from $612.952 to 1054.77 dollars per share, and have given the stock an average rating of buy.
The market seems to share this optimistic view, since Alibaba has a short interest of only 3.1% (this is the percentage of the share float that is being shorted). Each short position represents an investor's expectation that the price of the stock will decrease in the future.
Short selling involves borrowing shares and then selling them at current market prices. In the successful version of the strategy, the shares are purchased at a lower price at some time in the future. The investor then returns the shares to the lender, and keeps the profit made on the sell/buy transaction.
A possible indicator of market sentiment on a stock (besides its share price, of course) is the portion of institutional investors that make up its shareholders. Institutions such as banks, hedge funds, and wealth managers deploy significant resources towards identifying good investments. If they are invested heavily in a given company's stock, it could mean it's a good investment. Or it could mean the company is being targeted by a takeover attempt.
For what it's worth, institutions own 16.1% of Alibaba's shares, which is an average amount. It means that many institutions are invested, but not to the extent that they would be in a stock such as Apple or Amazon, whose institutional ownership rates hover around 60%. Bear in mind that institutional ownership is just one piece of the puzzle in determining market sentiment, and you should not consider this factor alone in making an investment decision.
To sum up, Alibaba is probably the subject of mixed market sentiment because of an analyst consensus of strong upside potential, a buy rating, an average amount of shares sold short, and a very small number of institutional investors. At Market Inference, we believe that any investment decision should be preceded by an in-depth analysis of the company's fundamental values and a comparison with similar stocks.
Here's a snapshot of some important facts to keep in mind about BABA:
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The stock has trailing 12 month earnings per share (EPS) of $3.86
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Alibaba has a trailing 12 month Price to Earnings (P/E) ratio of 22.9 compared to the S&P 500 average of 29.3
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The company has a Price to Book (P/B) ratio of 0.22 in contrast to the S&P 500's average ratio of 4.74
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Alibaba is a Consumer Discretionary company, and the sector average P/E and P/B ratios are 22.6 and 3.19 respectively
