As we already know from media reports and hedge fund investor letters, hedge funds delivered their best returns in a decade. Most investors who decided to stick with hedge funds after a rough 2018 recouped their losses by the end of the fourth quarter of 2019. A significant number of hedge funds continued their strong performance in 2020 and 2021 as well. We get to see hedge funds’ thoughts towards the market and individual stocks by aggregating their quarterly portfolio movements and reading their investor letters. In this article, we will particularly take a look at what hedge funds think about Gold Standard Ventures Corp (NYSE:GSV).
Gold Standard Ventures Corp (NYSE:GSV) investors should pay attention to a decrease in enthusiasm from smart money lately. Gold Standard Ventures Corp (NYSE:GSV) was in 4 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 8. Our calculations also showed that GSV isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).
Hedge funds’ reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn’t keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Hedge funds have more than $3.5 trillion in assets under management, so you can’t expect their entire portfolios to beat the market by large margins. Our research was able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 115 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). So you can still find a lot of gems by following hedge funds’ moves today.
Eric Sprott of Sprott Asset Management
At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, an activist hedge fund wants to buy this $27 biotech stock for $50. So, we recommended a long position to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 10 best battery 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. Keeping this in mind let’s take a glance at the recent hedge fund action surrounding Gold Standard Ventures Corp (NYSE:GSV).
Do Hedge Funds Think GSV Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At the end of the first quarter, a total of 4 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of -50% from the previous quarter. By comparison, 4 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in GSV a year ago. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of notable hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings substantially (or already accumulated large positions).
According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Peter Franklin Palmedo’s Sun Valley Gold has the largest position in Gold Standard Ventures Corp (NYSE:GSV), worth close to $21 million, corresponding to 7.5% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Sprott Asset Management, managed by Eric Sprott, which holds a $1.8 million position; the fund has 0.1% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining members of the smart money that are bullish consist of Ali Motamed’s Invenomic Capital Management, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management and . In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Sun Valley Gold allocated the biggest weight to Gold Standard Ventures Corp (NYSE:GSV), around 7.45% of its 13F portfolio. Sprott Asset Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.11 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to GSV.
Seeing as Gold Standard Ventures Corp (NYSE:GSV) has experienced a decline in interest from hedge fund managers, it’s safe to say that there were a few hedgies who were dropping their full holdings last quarter. Intriguingly, John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors dumped the biggest investment of all the hedgies followed by Insider Monkey, comprising close to $0.1 million in stock, and Mark Broach’s Manatuck Hill Partners was right behind this move, as the fund dropped about $0.1 million worth. These moves are important to note, as aggregate hedge fund interest was cut by 4 funds last quarter.
Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Gold Standard Ventures Corp (NYSE:GSV) but similarly valued. These stocks are RigNet Inc (NASDAQ:RNET), Velocity Financial, Inc. (NYSE:VEL), scPharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:SCPH), RGC Resources, Inc. (NASDAQ:RGCO), Agile Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:AGRX), ConforMIS, Inc. (NASDAQ:CFMS), and Hill International Inc (NYSE:HIL). All of these stocks’ market caps match GSV’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| RNET | 11 | 34970 | 4 |
| VEL | 5 | 34132 | -2 |
| SCPH | 8 | 68427 | -1 |
| RGCO | 1 | 2382 | 0 |
| AGRX | 6 | 35253 | -2 |
| CFMS | 13 | 36759 | 9 |
| HIL | 7 | 47961 | -2 |
| Average | 7.3 | 37126 | 0.9 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 7.3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $37 million. That figure was $23 million in GSV’s case. ConforMIS, Inc. (NASDAQ:CFMS) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand RGC Resources, Inc. (NASDAQ:RGCO) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Gold Standard Ventures Corp (NYSE:GSV) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for GSV is 28.5. 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 negative signal and 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 17.2% in 2021 through June 11th and surpassed the market again by 3.3 percentage points. Unfortunately GSV wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); GSV investors were disappointed as the stock returned 3.4% since the end of March (through 6/11) 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 most of these stocks already outperformed the market in 2021.
Follow Gold Standard Ventures Corp. (NYSE:GSV)
Follow Gold Standard Ventures Corp. (NYSE:GSV)
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
