Insider Monkey finished processing more than 738 13F filings submitted by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of March 31st, 2019. In this article we are going to take a look at smart money sentiment towards ProQR Therapeutics NV (NASDAQ:PRQR).
ProQR Therapeutics NV (NASDAQ:PRQR) has seen a decrease in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds recently. Our calculations also showed that PRQR isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds.
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 market by 40 percentage points since May 2014 through May 30, 2019 (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 30.9% through May 30, 2019. That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is an extremely useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.
We’re going to check out the fresh hedge fund action regarding ProQR Therapeutics NV (NASDAQ:PRQR).
What have hedge funds been doing with ProQR Therapeutics NV (NASDAQ:PRQR)?
At Q1’s end, a total of 10 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -9% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 5 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in PRQR a year ago. With hedge funds’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).
Among these funds, Adage Capital Management held the most valuable stake in ProQR Therapeutics NV (NASDAQ:PRQR), which was worth $51.8 million at the end of the first quarter. On the second spot was OrbiMed Advisors which amassed $27.5 million worth of shares. Moreover, Perceptive Advisors, Aquilo Capital Management, and DAFNA Capital Management were also bullish on ProQR Therapeutics NV (NASDAQ:PRQR), allocating a large percentage of their portfolios to this stock.
Judging by the fact that ProQR Therapeutics NV (NASDAQ:PRQR) has experienced falling interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, we can see that there exists a select few funds who sold off their full holdings by the end of the third quarter. Interestingly, Brian Ashford-Russell and Tim Woolley’s Polar Capital dropped the largest position of the 700 funds tracked by Insider Monkey, totaling close to $1.6 million in stock. Efrem Kamen’s fund, Pura Vida Investments, also dumped its stock, about $1.2 million worth. These bearish behaviors are important to note, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 1 funds by the end of the third quarter.
Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as ProQR Therapeutics NV (NASDAQ:PRQR) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Vivint Solar Inc (NYSE:VSLR), Unisys Corporation (NYSE:UIS), CEVA, Inc. (NASDAQ:CEVA), and Retail Value Inc. (NYSE:RVI). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to PRQR’s market value.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| VSLR | 11 | 23343 | -5 |
| UIS | 19 | 77897 | 2 |
| CEVA | 10 | 30237 | 0 |
| RVI | 17 | 168765 | 4 |
| Average | 14.25 | 75061 | 0.25 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 14.25 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $75 million. That figure was $106 million in PRQR’s case. Unisys Corporation (NYSE:UIS) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand CEVA, Inc. (NASDAQ:CEVA) is the least popular one with only 10 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks ProQR Therapeutics NV (NASDAQ:PRQR) is even less popular than CEVA. Hedge funds dodged a bullet by taking a bearish stance towards PRQR. Our calculations showed that the top 20 most popular hedge fund stocks returned 6.2% in Q2 through June 19th and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by nearly 3 percentage points. Unfortunately PRQR wasn’t nearly as popular as these 20 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was very bearish); PRQR investors were disappointed as the stock returned -21.3% during the same time frame 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 13 of these stocks already outperformed the market so far in the second quarter.
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
