Do Hedge Funds Love IntriCon Corporation (IIN)?

Insider Monkey has processed numerous 13F filings of hedge funds and successful value investors to create an extensive database of hedge fund holdings. The 13F filings show the hedge funds’ and successful investors’ positions as of the end of the first quarter. You can find articles about an individual hedge fund’s trades on numerous financial news websites. However, in this article we will take a look at their collective moves over the last 4.5 years and analyze what the smart money thinks of IntriCon Corporation (NASDAQ:IIN) based on that data.

IntriCon Corporation (NASDAQ:IIN) was in 5 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2020. IIN shareholders have witnessed a decrease in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds lately. There were 6 hedge funds in our database with IIN holdings at the end of the previous quarter. Our calculations also showed that IIN isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks).

Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

If you’d ask most investors, hedge funds are viewed as unimportant, old financial vehicles of years past. While there are more than 8000 funds in operation today, We choose to focus on the masters of this club, about 850 funds. These investment experts direct bulk of the hedge fund industry’s total asset base, and by tracking their unrivaled stock picks, Insider Monkey has unearthed numerous investment strategies that have historically outrun the market. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy beat the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points annually since its inception in March 2017. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 36% since February 2017 (through May 18th) even though the market was up 30% during the same period. We just shared a list of 8 short targets in our latest quarterly update .

Paul Marshall of Marshall Wace

At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, 2020’s unprecedented market conditions provide us with the highest number of trading opportunities in a decade. So we are checking out stocks recommended/scorned by legendary Bill Miller. We interview hedge fund managers and ask them about their best ideas. If you want to find out the best healthcare stock to buy right now, you can watch our latest hedge fund manager interview here. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. Our best call in 2020 was shorting the market when the S&P 500 was trading at 3150 after realizing the coronavirus pandemic’s significance before most investors. Keeping this in mind let’s view the recent hedge fund action surrounding IntriCon Corporation (NASDAQ:IIN).

How are hedge funds trading IntriCon Corporation (NASDAQ:IIN)?

Heading into the second quarter of 2020, a total of 5 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -17% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 14 hedge funds with a bullish position in IIN a year ago. So, let’s find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

The largest stake in IntriCon Corporation (NASDAQ:IIN) was held by Royce & Associates, which reported holding $7.8 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by GAMCO Investors with a $6.1 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Winton Capital Management, Citadel Investment Group, and Marshall Wace LLP. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Royce & Associates allocated the biggest weight to IntriCon Corporation (NASDAQ:IIN), around 0.11% of its 13F portfolio. GAMCO Investors is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.07 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to IIN.

Seeing as IntriCon Corporation (NASDAQ:IIN) has faced bearish sentiment from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s safe to say that there is a sect of fund managers that decided to sell off their entire stakes in the first quarter. At the top of the heap, Renaissance Technologies said goodbye to the largest stake of the “upper crust” of funds followed by Insider Monkey, worth about $0.4 million in stock. Cliff Asness’s fund, AQR Capital Management, also sold off its stock, about $0.4 million worth. These moves are important to note, as aggregate hedge fund interest fell by 1 funds in the first quarter.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as IntriCon Corporation (NASDAQ:IIN) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Celyad SA (NASDAQ:CYAD), Cherry Hill Mortgage Investment Corp (NYSE:CHMI), OneWater Marine Inc. (NASDAQ:ONEW), and Uranium Energy Corp. (NYSE:UEC). All of these stocks’ market caps are similar to IIN’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 5 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $6 million. That figure was $15 million in IIN’s case. Cherry Hill Mortgage Investment Corp (NYSE:CHMI) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Celyad SA (NASDAQ:CYAD) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. IntriCon Corporation (NASDAQ:IIN) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our calculations showed that top 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.4% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10.1 percentage points. These stocks gained 8.3% in 2020 through the end of May but beat the market by 13.2 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on IIN, though not to the same extent, as the stock returned 20.1% during the second quarter and outperformed the market.

Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.