The financial regulations require hedge funds and wealthy investors that exceeded the $100 million holdings threshold to file a report that shows their positions at the end of every quarter. Even though it isn’t the intention, these filings to a certain extent level the playing field for ordinary investors. The latest round of 13F filings disclosed the funds’ positions on June 30th. We at Insider Monkey have made an extensive database of more than 873 of those established hedge funds and famous value investors’ filings. In this article, we analyze how these elite funds and prominent investors traded Exicure, Inc. (NASDAQ:XCUR) based on those filings.
Is Exicure, Inc. (NASDAQ:XCUR) an outstanding stock to buy now? Investors who are in the know were in a bullish mood. The number of long hedge fund bets went up by 1 recently. Exicure, Inc. (NASDAQ:XCUR) was in 10 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the second quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 11. Our calculations also showed that XCUR isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings). There were 9 hedge funds in our database with XCUR positions at the end of the first quarter.
In the financial world there are a large number of tools investors have at their disposal to grade stocks. A pair of the most under-the-radar tools are hedge fund and insider trading indicators. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best fund managers can outperform the broader indices by a solid amount. Insider Monkey’s monthly stock picks returned 185.4% since March 2017 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 79 percentage points (see the details here). That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is a useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.
Eashwar Krishnan of Tybourne Capital Management
At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium mining is one of the fastest growing industries right now, so we are checking out stock pitches like this emerging lithium stock. We go through lists like the 10 best EV stocks to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our homepage. With all of this in mind we’re going to take a peek at the recent hedge fund action regarding Exicure, Inc. (NASDAQ:XCUR).
Do Hedge Funds Think XCUR Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At the end of June, a total of 10 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 11% from the previous quarter. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in XCUR over the last 24 quarters. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes considerably (or already accumulated large positions).
More specifically, 0 was the largest shareholder of Exicure, Inc. (NASDAQ:XCUR), with a stake worth $11 million reported as of the end of June. Trailing Tybourne Capital Management was Prosight Capital, which amassed a stake valued at $5.4 million. Knoll Capital Management, Millennium Management, and Granite Point Capital were also very fond of the stock, becoming one of the largest hedge fund holders of the company. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Prosight Capital allocated the biggest weight to Exicure, Inc. (NASDAQ:XCUR), around 3.38% of its 13F portfolio. Knoll Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 1 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to XCUR.
As aggregate interest increased, key hedge funds were leading the bulls’ herd. ExodusPoint Capital, managed by Michael Gelband, assembled the largest position in Exicure, Inc. (NASDAQ:XCUR). ExodusPoint Capital had $0.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Ben Levine, Andrew Manuel and Stefan Renold’s LMR Partners also initiated a $0 million position during the quarter.
Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Exicure, Inc. (NASDAQ:XCUR). We will take a look at Crexendo, Inc. (NASDAQ:CXDO), Forum Energy Technologies Inc (NYSE:FET), InflaRx N.V. (NASDAQ:IFRX), Core Molding Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:CMT), Oconee Federal Financial (NASDAQ:OFED), Inpixon (NASDAQ:INPX), and Old Point Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:OPOF). All of these stocks’ market caps match XCUR’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| CXDO | 1 | 148 | 0 |
| FET | 7 | 7174 | 2 |
| IFRX | 12 | 26689 | -5 |
| CMT | 3 | 22502 | 0 |
| OFED | 2 | 774 | 1 |
| INPX | 1 | 16 | -3 |
| OPOF | 2 | 1437 | 0 |
| Average | 4 | 8391 | -0.7 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $8 million. That figure was $22 million in XCUR’s case. InflaRx N.V. (NASDAQ:IFRX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Crexendo, Inc. (NASDAQ:CXDO) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Exicure, Inc. (NASDAQ:XCUR) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for XCUR is 74.2. Stocks with higher number of hedge fund positions relative to other stocks as well as relative to their historical range receive a higher sentiment score. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. Our calculations showed that top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 25.7% in 2021 through September 27th and beat the market again by 6.2 percentage points. Unfortunately XCUR wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on XCUR were disappointed as the stock returned -14% since the end of June (through 9/27) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds as many of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.
Follow Exicure Inc. (NASDAQ:XCUR)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
