Hedge funds run by legendary names like Nelson Peltz and David Tepper make billions of dollars a year for themselves and their super-rich accredited investors (you’ve got to have a minimum of $1 million liquid to invest in a hedge fund) by spending enormous resources on analyzing and uncovering data about small-cap stocks that the big brokerage houses don’t follow. Small caps are where they can generate significant out-performance. That’s why we pay special attention to hedge fund activity in these stocks.
Is Assembly Biosciences Inc (NASDAQ:ASMB) worth your attention right now? Money managers are becoming less confident. The number of bullish hedge fund positions decreased by 2 recently. At the end of this article we will also compare ASMB to other stocks, including Allot Communications Ltd. (NASDAQ:ALLT), Emerge Energy Services LP (NYSE:EMES), and Orion Marine Group, Inc. (NYSE:ORN) to get a better sense of its popularity.
Follow Assembly Biosciences Inc. (NASDAQ:ASMB)
Follow Assembly Biosciences Inc. (NASDAQ:ASMB)
To most shareholders, hedge funds are perceived as underperforming, old investment vehicles of the past. While there are more than 8000 funds in operation at the moment, We choose to focus on the crème de la crème of this group, about 700 funds. These hedge fund managers manage the lion’s share of the hedge fund industry’s total asset base, and by tracking their first-class equity investments, Insider Monkey has unsheathed various investment strategies that have historically outstripped Mr. Market. Insider Monkey’s small-cap hedge fund strategy exceeded the S&P 500 index by 12 percentage points annually for a decade in their back tests.
With all of this in mind, we’re going to take a gander at the new action regarding Assembly Biosciences Inc (NASDAQ:ASMB).
How have hedgies been trading Assembly Biosciences Inc (NASDAQ:ASMB)?
Heading into Q4, a total of 12 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -14% from one quarter earlier. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes substantially (or already accumulated large positions).
According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Oleg Nodelman’s EcoR1 Capital has the largest position in Assembly Biosciences Inc (NASDAQ:ASMB), worth close to $18 million, amounting to 8.2% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Visium Asset Management, managed by Jacob Gottlieb, which holds a $15.3 million position; 0.2% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Some other members of the smart money that hold long positions consist of Samuel Isaly’s OrbiMed Advisors, Joseph Edelman’s Perceptive Advisors and Daniel Gold’s QVT Financial.
Seeing as Assembly Biosciences, Inc (NASDAQ:ASMB) has experienced a decline in interest from hedge fund managers, logic holds that there was a specific group of hedgies that decided to sell off their full holdings in the third quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Ken Greenberg and David Kim’s Ghost Tree Capital cut the biggest stake of all the hedgies tracked by Insider Monkey, totaling an estimated $3.4 million in stock, and Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies was right behind this move, as the fund dumped about $0.2 million worth of shares. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 2 funds in the third quarter.
Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Assembly Biosciences Inc (NASDAQ:ASMB) but similarly valued. These stocks are Allot Communications Ltd. (NASDAQ:ALLT), Emerge Energy Services LP (NYSE:EMES), Orion Marine Group, Inc. (NYSE:ORN), and UFP Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:UFPT). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble ASMB’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| ALLT | 8 | 26523 | -1 |
| EMES | 5 | 8021 | 1 |
| ORN | 12 | 15012 | 0 |
| UFPT | 7 | 35019 | 1 |
As you can see these stocks had an average of 8 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $21 million. That figure was $74 million in ASMB’s case. Orion Marine Group, Inc. (NYSE:ORN) is the most popular stock in this table, while Emerge Energy Services LP (NYSE:EMES) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. Assembly Biosciences Inc (NASDAQ:ASMB) is not the most popular stock in this group, but hedge fund interest is still above average. This is a slightly positive signal, but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard ORN might be a better candidate to consider a long position.