Hedge Funds Are Selling Threshold Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (THLD)

Is it smart to be bullish on Threshold Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:THLD)?

At the moment, there are tons of methods market participants can use to watch Mr. Market. A pair of the most useful are hedge fund and insider trading sentiment. At Insider Monkey, our research analyses have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the best hedge fund managers can trounce their index-focused peers by a significant amount (see just how much).

Equally as key, optimistic insider trading activity is a second way to look at the marketplace. Just as you’d expect, there are many stimuli for an executive to sell shares of his or her company, but only one, very simple reason why they would behave bullishly. Plenty of empirical studies have demonstrated the valuable potential of this tactic if “monkeys” understand where to look (learn more here).

Keeping this in mind, we’re going to examine the latest info for Threshold Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:THLD).

What have hedge funds been doing with Threshold Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:THLD)?

At Q2’s end, a total of 12 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of -14% from the first quarter. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings meaningfully.

According to our 13F database, Julian Baker and Felix Baker’s Baker Bros. Advisors had the biggest position in Threshold Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:THLD), worth close to $8.4 million, accounting for 0.2% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson of Adage Capital Management, with a $7.3 million position; less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Some other peers that hold long positions include Israel Englander’s Millennium Management, Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management and Matt McLennan’s First Eagle Investment Management.

Because Threshold Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:THLD) has witnessed a fall in interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s easy to see that there was a specific group of money managers that decided to sell off their entire stakes last quarter. Interestingly, Jay Venkatesen’s Ayer Capital Management sold off the biggest position of the “upper crust” of funds we track, worth about $0.7 million in stock. Donald Chiboucis’s fund, Columbus Circle Investors, also said goodbye to its stock, about $0.3 million worth. These moves are intriguing to say the least, as total hedge fund interest fell by 2 funds last quarter.

What do corporate executives and insiders think about Threshold Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:THLD)?

Insider buying made by high-level executives is at its handiest when the company in focus has seen transactions within the past six months. Over the last six-month time period, Threshold Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:THLD) has seen zero unique insiders buying, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

We’ll check out the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to Threshold Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:THLD). These stocks are Progenics Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:PGNX), Coronado Biosciences Inc (NASDAQ:CNDO), Curis, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRIS), Oncolytics Biotech, Inc. (USA) (NASDAQ:ONCY), and GTx, Inc. (NASDAQ:GTXI). This group of stocks are in the biotechnology industry and their market caps are similar to THLD’s market cap.

Using the returns explained by the previously mentioned studies, regular investors must always keep one eye on hedge fund and insider trading sentiment, and Threshold Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:THLD) is an important part of this process.

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