Cepheid (CPHD): What Smart Money Thinks about This Stock?

The 700+ hedge funds and money managers tracked by Insider Monkey have already compiled and submitted their 13F filings for the third quarter, which unveil their equity positions as of September 30. We went through these filings, fixed typos and other more significant errors and identified the changes in hedge fund positions. Our extensive review of these public filings is finally over, so this article is set to reveal the smart money sentiment towards Cepheid (NASDAQ:CPHD).

Is Cepheid (NASDAQ:CPHD) a buy here? Money managers are getting more bullish, as the number of bullish hedge fund positions advanced by 16 in recent months. The level and the change in hedge fund popularity aren’t the only variables you need to analyze to decipher hedge funds’ perspectives. A stock may witness a boost in popularity, but it may still be less popular than similarly priced stocks. That’s why at the end of this article we will examine companies such as New Gold Inc. (USA) (NYSEAMEX:NGD), Visteon Corp (NYSE:VC), and Laredo Petroleum Holdings Inc (NYSE:LPI) to gather more data points.

At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 18% gains over the past 12 months, more than doubling the 8% returns enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs.

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With all of this in mind, let’s go over the recent action encompassing Cepheid (NASDAQ:CPHD).

What have hedge funds been doing with Cepheid (NASDAQ:CPHD)?

A total of 33 funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on Cepheid at the end of the third quarter, up by 94% from the end of June. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings substantially (or already accumulated large positions).

According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Brian Taylor’s Pine River Capital Management has the most valuable position in Cepheid (NASDAQ:CPHD), worth close to $74.5 million, comprising 1.3% of its total 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund is Alec Litowitz and Ross Laser’s Magnetar Capital, with a $74.1 million position; the fund has 1.1% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other professional money managers with similar optimism contain Robert Emil Zoellner’s Alpine Associates, Carl Tiedemann and Michael Tiedemann’s TIG Advisors, and Isaac Corre’s Governors Lane. All these investors assembled their stakes during the third quarter

On the next page, we are going to see how the hedge fund sentiment towards Cepheid compares with other stocks.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Cepheid (NASDAQ:CPHD). These stocks are New Gold Inc. (USA) (NYSEAMEX:NGD), Visteon Corp (NYSE:VC), Laredo Petroleum Holdings Inc (NYSE:LPI), and InterOil Corporation (USA) (NYSE:IOC). This group of stocks’ market values resemble CPHD’s market value.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 22 funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $359 million, compared to $512 million in CPHD’s case. Visteon Corp (NYSE:VC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand New Gold Inc. (USA) (NYSEAMEX:NGD) is the least popular one with only 15 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Cepheid (NASDAQ:CPHD) is more popular among hedge funds. Considering that hedge funds are fond of this stock in relation to its market cap peers, it may be a good idea to analyze it in detail and potentially include it in your portfolio.