“Since 2006, value stocks (IVE vs IVW) have underperformed 11 of the 13 calendar years and when they beat growth, it wasn’t by much. Cumulatively, through this week, it has been a 122% differential (up 52% for value vs up 174% for growth). This appears to be the longest and most severe drought for value investors since data collection began. It will go our way eventually as there are too many people paying far too much for today’s darlings, both public and private. Further, the ten-year yield of 2.5% (pre-tax) isn’t attractive nor is real estate. We believe the value part of the global equity market is the only place to earn solid risk adjusted returns and we believe those returns will be higher than normal,” said Vilas Fund in its Q1 investor letter. We aren’t sure whether value stocks outperform growth, but we follow hedge fund investor letters to understand where the markets and stocks might be going. This article will lay out and discuss the hedge fund and institutional investor sentiment towards Oxford Immunotec Global PLC (NASDAQ:OXFD).
Oxford Immunotec Global PLC (NASDAQ:OXFD) was in 19 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. OXFD investors should be aware of an increase in hedge fund interest recently. There were 16 hedge funds in our database with OXFD holdings at the end of the previous quarter. Our calculations also showed that OXFD isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings and see the video below for Q2 rankings).
Video: Click the image to watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.
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’ large-cap stock picks indeed failed to beat the market between 1999 and 2016. However, we were able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the Russell 2000 ETFs by 40 percentage points since May 2014 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that’ll significantly underperform the market. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 and they lost 27.8% through November 21, 2019. That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is an extremely useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.
Kamran Moghtaderi of Eversept Partners
Unlike the largest US hedge funds that are convinced Dow will soar past 40,000 or the world’s most bearish hedge fund that’s more convinced than ever that a crash is coming, our long-short investment strategy doesn’t rely on bull or bear markets to deliver double digit returns. We only rely on the best performing hedge funds‘ buy/sell signals. Let’s take a look at the latest hedge fund action surrounding Oxford Immunotec Global PLC (NASDAQ:OXFD).
How have hedgies been trading Oxford Immunotec Global PLC (NASDAQ:OXFD)?
Heading into the fourth quarter of 2019, a total of 19 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 19% from the second quarter of 2019. On the other hand, there were a total of 15 hedge funds with a bullish position in OXFD a year ago. So, let’s find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
Among these funds, Polar Capital held the most valuable stake in Oxford Immunotec Global PLC (NASDAQ:OXFD), which was worth $42.7 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was Consonance Capital Management which amassed $35.7 million worth of shares. Alyeska Investment Group, Millennium Management, and Endurant Capital Management 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 Endurant Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Oxford Immunotec Global PLC (NASDAQ:OXFD), around 4.9% of its 13F portfolio. Consonance Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 3.53 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to OXFD.
As one would reasonably expect, key money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. GLG Partners, managed by Noam Gottesman, initiated the largest position in Oxford Immunotec Global PLC (NASDAQ:OXFD). GLG Partners had $12.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Kamran Moghtaderi’s Eversept Partners also made a $4.3 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are David Harding’s Winton Capital Management, Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management, and Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace.
Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Oxford Immunotec Global PLC (NASDAQ:OXFD) but similarly valued. These stocks are Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust (NYSE:PEI), Vishay Precision Group Inc (NYSE:VPG), Sentinel Energy Services Inc. (NASDAQ:STNL), and Franklin Financial Network Inc (NYSE:FSB). This group of stocks’ market values match OXFD’s market value.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| PEI | 5 | 8826 | -1 |
| VPG | 15 | 137650 | 1 |
| STNL | 15 | 122821 | 0 |
| FSB | 3 | 14351 | -1 |
| Average | 9.5 | 70912 | -0.25 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 9.5 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $71 million. That figure was $195 million in OXFD’s case. Vishay Precision Group Inc (NYSE:VPG) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Franklin Financial Network Inc (NYSE:FSB) is the least popular one with only 3 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Oxford Immunotec Global PLC (NASDAQ:OXFD) is more popular among hedge funds. Our calculations showed that top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 37.4% in 2019 through the end of November and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 9.9 percentage points. Unfortunately OXFD wasn’t nearly as popular as these 20 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on OXFD were disappointed as the stock returned 0.4% during the first two months of the fourth quarter and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds as 70 percent of these stocks already outperformed the market in Q4.
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
