Diamond Hill Capital, an investment management company, released its “Mid Cap Strategy” third-quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The market added robust year-to-date gains in Q3. The portfolio underperformed the Russell Midcap Index in the quarter. The relative weakness is concentrated primarily among materials holdings. The strategy returned 8.53% (gross) and 8.34% (net) in the quarter compared to 9.21% 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 Ciena Corporation (NYSE:CIEN) in the third quarter 2024 investor letter. Ciena Corporation (NYSE:CIEN) is a global provider of hardware and software services for communication networks. The one-month return of Ciena Corporation (NYSE:CIEN) was 7.35%, and its shares gained 61.47% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On November 13, 2024, Ciena Corporation (NYSE:CIEN) stock closed at $71.40 per share with a market capitalization of $10.312 billion.

Diamond Hill Mid Cap Strategy stated the following regarding Ciena Corporation (NYSE:CIEN) in its Q3 2024 investor letter:

"Other top Q3 contributors included Parker-Hannifin Corporation and Ciena Corporation (NYSE:CIEN). Networking systems company Ciena is benefiting from improving demand in its service provider vertical combined with solid demand from its cloud customers."

An aerial view of a large telecommunications network covering a city skyline.

Ciena Corporation (NYSE:CIEN) is not on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 38 hedge fund portfolios held Ciena Corporation (NYSE:CIEN) at the end of the second quarter which was 36 in the previous quarter. Ciena Corporation's (NYSE:CIEN) total revenue in the third quarter was $942 million and adjusted gross margin was 43.7%. While we acknowledge the potential of Ciena Corporation (NYSE:CIEN) 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 Ciena Corporation (NYSE:CIEN) and shared the list of worst 5G stocks to buy according to short sellers along with the latest updates around the 5G industry. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q3 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.