In this article we will take a look at whether hedge funds think Actinium Pharmaceuticals Inc (NYSE:ATNM) is a good investment right now. We check hedge fund and billionaire investor sentiment before delving into hours of research. Hedge funds spend millions of dollars on Ivy League graduates, unconventional data sources, expert networks, and get tips from investment bankers and industry insiders. Sure they sometimes fail miserably, but their consensus stock picks historically outperformed the market after adjusting for known risk factors.
Actinium Pharmaceuticals Inc (NYSE:ATNM) shares haven’t seen a lot of action during the first quarter. Overall, hedge fund sentiment was unchanged. The stock was in 4 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2020. At the end of this article we will also compare ATNM to other stocks including Almaden Minerals Ltd. (NYSE:AAU), Medley Capital Corp (NYSE:MCC), and Ampco-Pittsburgh Corp. (NYSE:AP) to get a better sense of its popularity.
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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. Our research has shown that hedge funds’ small-cap stock picks managed to beat the market by double digits annually between 1999 and 2016, but the margin of outperformance has been declining in recent years. Nevertheless, we were still able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by 51 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that underperformed the market by 10 percentage points annually between 2006 and 2017. Interestingly the margin of underperformance of these stocks has been increasing in recent years. Investors who are long the market and short these stocks would have returned more than 27% annually between 2015 and 2017. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 in our quarterly newsletter.
Philip Hempleman of Ardsley Partners
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 we’re going to go over the key hedge fund action regarding Actinium Pharmaceuticals Inc (NYSE:ATNM).
What have hedge funds been doing with Actinium Pharmaceuticals Inc (NYSE:ATNM)?
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 0% from the fourth quarter of 2019. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards ATNM 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, Renaissance Technologies has the most valuable position in Actinium Pharmaceuticals Inc (NYSE:ATNM), worth close to $0.2 million, amounting to less than 0.1%% of its total 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Sabby Capital, led by Hal Mintz, holding a $0.1 million position; the fund has 0.1% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other professional money managers that are bullish contain Philip Hempleman’s Ardsley Partners, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and . In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Sabby Capital allocated the biggest weight to Actinium Pharmaceuticals Inc (NYSE:ATNM), around 0.05% of its 13F portfolio. Ardsley Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.01 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ATNM.
We view hedge fund activity in the stock unfavorable, but in this case there was only a single hedge fund selling its entire position: Endurant Capital Management. One hedge fund selling its entire position doesn’t always imply a bearish intent. Theoretically a hedge fund may decide to sell a promising position in order to invest the proceeds in a more promising idea. However, we don’t think this is the case in this case because only one of the 800+ hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey identified as a viable investment and initiated a position in the stock (that fund was Citadel Investment Group).
Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Actinium Pharmaceuticals Inc (NYSE:ATNM). We will take a look at Almaden Minerals Ltd. (NYSE:AAU), Medley Capital Corp (NYSE:MCC), Ampco-Pittsburgh Corp. (NYSE:AP), and Air Industries Group (NYSE:AIRI). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to ATNM’s market value.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| AAU | 2 | 1955 | -1 |
| MCC | 6 | 1422 | 1 |
| AP | 3 | 5052 | -2 |
| AIRI | 1 | 289 | -1 |
| Average | 3 | 2180 | -0.75 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $2 million. That figure was $0 million in ATNM’s case. Medley Capital Corp (NYSE:MCC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Air Industries Group (NYSE:AIRI) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Actinium Pharmaceuticals Inc (NYSE:ATNM) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. 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 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. Unfortunately ATNM wasn’t nearly as popular as these 10 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on ATNM were disappointed as the stock returned 9.6% during the same time period 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 many of these stocks already outperformed the market so far this year.
Follow Actinium Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NYSEMKT:ATNM)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.