Hedge Funds Are Selling MagnaChip Semiconductor Corporation (MX)

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 MagnaChip Semiconductor Corporation (NYSE:MX) based on that data.

MagnaChip Semiconductor Corporation (NYSE:MX) was in 22 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. MX investors should be aware of a decrease in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds lately. There were 27 hedge funds in our database with MX holdings at the end of the previous quarter. Our calculations also showed that MX 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.

In the eyes of most shareholders, hedge funds are perceived as slow, outdated financial tools of yesteryear. While there are over 8000 funds with their doors open today, Our researchers look at the elite of this club, approximately 850 funds. These money managers direct most of all hedge funds’ total asset base, and by monitoring their inimitable picks, Insider Monkey has determined numerous investment strategies that have historically defeated the market. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy outrun the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points per annum 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 .

Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital Management

Keeping this in mind we’re going to review the key hedge fund action regarding MagnaChip Semiconductor Corporation (NYSE:MX).

How have hedgies been trading MagnaChip Semiconductor Corporation (NYSE:MX)?

At Q1’s end, a total of 22 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -19% from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards MX over the last 18 quarters. So, let’s find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Oaktree Capital Management, managed by Howard Marks, holds the number one position in MagnaChip Semiconductor Corporation (NYSE:MX). Oaktree Capital Management has a $32.5 million position in the stock, comprising 0.9% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Rubric Capital Management, led by David Rosen, holding a $27.8 million position; 4.4% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Some other professional money managers that hold long positions include Don Morgan’s Brigade Capital, Stephen Perkins’s Toronado Partners and Thomas Ellis and Todd Hammer’s North Run Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position North Run Capital allocated the biggest weight to MagnaChip Semiconductor Corporation (NYSE:MX), around 12.25% of its 13F portfolio. Toronado Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 5.92 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to MX.

Due to the fact that MagnaChip Semiconductor Corporation (NYSE:MX) has experienced declining sentiment from the aggregate hedge fund industry, it’s easy to see that there lies a certain “tier” of fund managers who sold off their full holdings in the first quarter. At the top of the heap, Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management cut the biggest stake of all the hedgies watched by Insider Monkey, valued at close to $9.5 million in stock, and Israel Englander’s Millennium Management was right behind this move, as the fund dropped about $6.7 million worth. These moves are interesting, as total hedge fund interest dropped by 5 funds in the first quarter.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as MagnaChip Semiconductor Corporation (NYSE:MX) but similarly valued. We will take a look at PDF Solutions, Inc. (NASDAQ:PDFS), Myers Industries, Inc. (NYSE:MYE), Wabash National Corporation (NYSE:WNC), and Intersect ENT Inc (NASDAQ:XENT). This group of stocks’ market valuations are closest to MX’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 15.25 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $49 million. That figure was $154 million in MX’s case. Intersect ENT Inc (NASDAQ:XENT) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand PDF Solutions, Inc. (NASDAQ:PDFS) is the least popular one with only 12 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks MagnaChip Semiconductor Corporation (NYSE:MX) is more popular among hedge funds. 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 13.9% in 2020 through June 10th and still beat the market by 14.2 percentage points. Unfortunately MX wasn’t nearly as popular as these 10 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on MX were disappointed as the stock returned 11.2% during the second quarter (through June 10th) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market in 2020.

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