With the first-quarter round of 13F filings behind us it is time to take a look at the stocks in which some of the best money managers in the world preferred to invest or sell heading into the second quarter of 2021. One of these stocks was 180 Life Sciences Corp. (NASDAQ:ATNF).
Is 180 Life Sciences Corp. (NASDAQ:ATNF) a buy here? The best stock pickers were cutting their exposure. The number of bullish hedge fund positions decreased by 1 recently. 180 Life Sciences Corp. (NASDAQ:ATNF) was in 4 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 5. Our calculations also showed that ATNF 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.
Bart Baum of Ionic Capital 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 we’re going to take a glance at the fresh hedge fund action encompassing 180 Life Sciences Corp. (NASDAQ:ATNF).
Do Hedge Funds Think ATNF 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 -20% from the fourth quarter of 2020. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards ATNF over the last 23 quarters. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a few noteworthy hedge fund managers who were adding to their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).
Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Bart Baum’s Ionic Capital Management has the most valuable position in 180 Life Sciences Corp. (NASDAQ:ATNF), worth close to $0.9 million, amounting to 0.1% of its total 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Citadel Investment Group, led by Ken Griffin, holding a $0.8 million call position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish include Michael Platt and William Reeves’s BlueCrest Capital Mgmt., Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and Matthew L Pinz’s Pinz Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Ionic Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to 180 Life Sciences Corp. (NASDAQ:ATNF), around 0.11% of its 13F portfolio. Pinz Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.01 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ATNF.
Judging by the fact that 180 Life Sciences Corp. (NASDAQ:ATNF) has faced a decline in interest from the aggregate hedge fund industry, it’s safe to say that there lies a certain “tier” of hedge funds that decided to sell off their full holdings in the first quarter. Interestingly, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management dumped the largest position of the 750 funds followed by Insider Monkey, comprising about $0.2 million in stock. Phillip Goldstein, Andrew Dakos and Steven Samuels’s fund, Bulldog Investors, also sold off its stock, about $0.1 million worth. These transactions are intriguing to say the least, as total hedge fund interest dropped by 1 funds in the first quarter.
Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to 180 Life Sciences Corp. (NASDAQ:ATNF). These stocks are PhaseBio Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:PHAS), MainStreet Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:MNSB), Repro Med Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:KRMD), Kazia Therapeutics Limited (NASDAQ:KZIA), Manitex International, Inc. (NASDAQ:MNTX), Standard AVB Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:STND), and Intellicheck Inc. (NASDAQ:IDN). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to ATNF’s market value.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| PHAS | 7 | 27505 | 0 |
| MNSB | 2 | 9781 | -1 |
| KRMD | 11 | 5871 | -2 |
| KZIA | 1 | 283 | 0 |
| MNTX | 4 | 18265 | -1 |
| STND | 6 | 9500 | 2 |
| IDN | 7 | 3205 | 4 |
| Average | 5.4 | 10630 | 0.3 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 5.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $11 million. That figure was $2 million in ATNF’s case. Repro Med Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:KRMD) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Kazia Therapeutics Limited (NASDAQ:KZIA) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. 180 Life Sciences Corp. (NASDAQ:ATNF) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ATNF is 43. 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. 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 still beat the market by 3.3 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on ATNF as the stock returned 62.7% since the end of the first quarter (through 6/11) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.