As the Dow Jones Industrial Average continues to trend downward, more questions loom around the future of banking. Ever since last week saw SVB Financial’s (NASDAQ:SIVB) principal subsidiary, Silicon Valley Bank, collapse after being seized by regulators, bank stocks have been in turmoil. UBS Group (NYSE:UBS) is no exception.
Shares of UBS stock are steadily declining today, as they have been for most of the week. In fact, the financial sector is struggling even more after Credit Suisse (NYSE:CS) revealed it had lost a significant source of funding. This type of news tends to raise questions from investors regarding the stability of similar investments. UBS stock is falling alongside Credit Suisse as confidence in the banking sector declines.
UBS recently addressed the market selloff that’s helping push stocks down in the wake of the SVB meltdown. In a statement released by its Wealth Management USA division, the company stated:
“Bank stock investors seem to be taking a sell first and ask questions later approach to the group, which will likely continue to weigh on bank shares for a while. Nevertheless, while we remain cautious on US financials with a least preferred view, we believe some of the recent sell-off in banks has been overdone—especially in select universal banks, which remain well capitalized and sufficiently liquid to continue to serve clients.”
As bad as the economic landscape looks for banks right now, it seems that UBS investors share this view. Institutional investment in UBS stock remains strong, even as the banking world faces an uncertain future.
Let’s take a look at the names who remain firmly behind UBS shares.
Top 5 Investors Betting Big on UBS Stock
According to data from WhaleWisdom, institutional investment in UBS stock has been generally good since the previous quarter. The number of funds holding has seen a modest increase, rising 2% from 354 to 361. The number of 13F shares has jumped from 1.145 billion to 1.259 billion as well while percentage of ownership has risen 8.6%. Meanwhile, although the amount of increased positions has fallen almost 2% over the previous quarter, the number of new positions has also spiked from 43 to 60. UBS stock still boasts a fairly high put/call ratio of 1.43 as well.
The top institutional investors in UBS stock are as follows:
- Dodge & Cox: 159.31 million shares. The firm increased its UBS holdings by 1.71 million shares in the fourth quarter of 2022.
- MFS Investment Management: 132.05 million shares. MFS added 1.25 million UBS shares in Q4 2022.
- UBS Group: 121 million shares. The investment bank decreased holdings in its own company by 1.40 million shares in Q4 2022.
- Norges Bank: 117.30 million shares. Norges added its entire position in Q4 2022.
- Vanguard Group: 108.86 million shares. Vanguard offloaded 519,903 shares of UBS stock in Q4 2022.
On the date of publication, Samuel O’Brient did not hold (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.
