Many prominent investors, including Warren Buffett, David Tepper and Stan Druckenmiller, have been cautious regarding the current bull market and missed out as the stock market reached another high in recent weeks. On the other hand, technology hedge funds weren’t timid and registered double digit market beating gains. Financials, energy and industrial stocks initially suffered the most but many of these stocks delivered strong returns since November and hedge funds actually increased their positions in these stocks. In this article we will find out how hedge fund sentiment towards Medicenna Therapeutics Corp. (NASDAQ:MDNA) changed recently.
Medicenna Therapeutics Corp. (NASDAQ:MDNA) investors should be aware of an increase in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds in recent months. Medicenna Therapeutics Corp. (NASDAQ:MDNA) was in 5 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 3. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. There were 3 hedge funds in our database with MDNA holdings at the end of December. Our calculations also showed that MDNA isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).
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Israel Englander of Millennium Management
At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, an activist hedge fund owns nearly 40% of this $23 biotech stock and is trying to buy the rest for around $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. Now we’re going to go over the key hedge fund action encompassing Medicenna Therapeutics Corp. (NASDAQ:MDNA).
Do Hedge Funds Think MDNA Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At the end of the first quarter, a total of 5 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 67% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards MDNA over the last 23 quarters. With hedgies’ capital changing hands, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes substantially (or already accumulated large positions).
More specifically, AIGH Investment Partners was the largest shareholder of Medicenna Therapeutics Corp. (NASDAQ:MDNA), with a stake worth $3.4 million reported as of the end of March. Trailing AIGH Investment Partners was Renaissance Technologies, which amassed a stake valued at $0.6 million. Millennium Management, SilverArc Capital, and Marshall Wace LLP 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 AIGH Investment Partners allocated the biggest weight to Medicenna Therapeutics Corp. (NASDAQ:MDNA), around 0.72% of its 13F portfolio. SilverArc Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.24 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to MDNA.
With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, some big names were breaking ground themselves. AIGH Investment Partners, managed by Orin Hirschman, created the most outsized position in Medicenna Therapeutics Corp. (NASDAQ:MDNA). AIGH Investment Partners had $3.4 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Israel Englander’s Millennium Management also made a $0.5 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The only other fund with a new position in the stock is Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP.
Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Medicenna Therapeutics Corp. (NASDAQ:MDNA) but similarly valued. These stocks are PLx Pharma Inc. (NASDAQ:PLXP), Kindred Biosciences Inc (NASDAQ:KIN), IZEA Worldwide Inc. (NASDAQ:IZEA), Penn Virginia Corporation (NASDAQ:PVAC), Osmotica Pharmaceuticals plc (NASDAQ:OSMT), Lantern Pharma Inc. (NASDAQ:LTRN), and Consolidated Water Co. Ltd. (NASDAQ:CWCO). All of these stocks’ market caps match MDNA’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| PLXP | 9 | 40775 | 5 |
| KIN | 11 | 72319 | 1 |
| IZEA | 5 | 2646 | 5 |
| PVAC | 10 | 12113 | -2 |
| OSMT | 7 | 5334 | -1 |
| LTRN | 3 | 13915 | 2 |
| CWCO | 4 | 9284 | -3 |
| Average | 7 | 22341 | 1 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $22 million. That figure was $5 million in MDNA’s case. Kindred Biosciences Inc (NASDAQ:KIN) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Lantern Pharma Inc. (NASDAQ:LTRN) is the least popular one with only 3 bullish hedge fund positions. Medicenna Therapeutics Corp. (NASDAQ:MDNA) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for MDNA is 49.5. 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 17.4% in 2021 through June 18th and surpassed the market again by 6.1 percentage points. Unfortunately MDNA wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); MDNA investors were disappointed as the stock returned -9.1% since the end of March (through 6/18) 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.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.