It is already common knowledge that individual investors do not usually have the necessary resources and abilities to properly research an investment opportunity. As a result, most investors pick their illusory “winners” by making a superficial analysis and research that leads to poor performance on aggregate. The Standard and Poor’s 500 Index returned 7.6% over the 12-month period ending November 21, while more than 51% of the constituents of the index underperformed the benchmark. Hence, a random stock picking process will most likely lead to disappointment. At the same time, the 30 most favored mid-cap stocks by the best performing hedge funds monitored by Insider Monkey generated a return of 18% over the same time span. Of course, hedge funds do make wrong bets on some occasions and these get disproportionately publicized on financial media, but piggybacking their moves can beat the broader market on average. That’s why we are going to go over recent hedge fund activity in Advanced Accelerator Application SA (ADR) (NASDAQ:AAAP) .
Advanced Accelerator Application SA (ADR) (NASDAQ:AAAP) investors should pay attention to an increase in enthusiasm from smart money in recent months. There were 7 hedge funds in our database with AAAP positions at the end of September. The level and the change in hedge fund popularity aren’t the only variables you need to analyze to decipher hedge funds’ perspectives. A stock may witness a boost in popularity but it may still be less popular than similarly priced stocks. That’s why at the end of this article we will examine companies such as Gogo Inc (NASDAQ:GOGO), ClubCorp Holdings Inc (NYSE:MYCC), and AveXis Inc (NASDAQ:AVXS) to gather more data points.
At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 18% gains over the past 12 months, more than doubling the 8% returns enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs.
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Now, let’s view the recent action encompassing Advanced Accelerator Application SA (ADR) (NASDAQ:AAAP).
Hedge fund activity in Advanced Accelerator Application SA (ADR) (NASDAQ:AAAP)
At Q3’s end, a total of 7 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 17% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 7 hedge funds with a bullish position in AAAP at the beginning of this year. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists a few noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).
According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Baker Bros. Advisors, led by Julian Baker and Felix Baker, holds the most valuable position in Advanced Accelerator Application SA (ADR) (NASDAQ:AAAP). Baker Bros. Advisors has a $39.2 million position in the stock, comprising 0.4% of its 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Rock Springs Capital Management, led by Kris Jenner, Gordon Bussard, Graham McPhail, which holds a $35.4 million position; 2.2% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Some other members of the smart money with similar optimism comprise Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson’s Adage Capital Management, Matt Sirovich and Jeremy Mindich’s Scopia Capital and Michael Castor’s Sio Capital. We should note that none of these hedge funds are among our list of the 100 best performing hedge funds which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-microcap stocks.
As industrywide interest jumped, key money managers were breaking ground themselves. Millennium Management, one of the 10 largest hedge funds in the world, established the largest position in Advanced Accelerator Application SA (ADR) (NASDAQ:AAAP). Millennium Management had $0.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter.
Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Advanced Accelerator Application SA (ADR) (NASDAQ:AAAP). We will take a look at Gogo Inc (NASDAQ:GOGO), ClubCorp Holdings Inc (NYSE:MYCC), AveXis Inc (NASDAQ:AVXS), and Trina Solar Limited (ADR) (NYSE:TSL). This group of stocks’ market caps are similar to AAAP’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| GOGO | 21 | 183787 | 5 |
| MYCC | 18 | 102793 | 0 |
| AVXS | 20 | 297586 | 10 |
| TSL | 18 | 206998 | 3 |
As you can see these stocks had an average of 19.25 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $198 million. That figure was $138 million in AAAP’s case. Gogo Inc (NASDAQ:GOGO) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand ClubCorp Holdings Inc (NYSE:MYCC) is the least popular one with only 18 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Advanced Accelerator Application SA (ADR) (NASDAQ:AAAP) is even less popular than MYCC. Considering that hedge funds aren’t fond of this stock in relation to other companies analyzed in this article, it may be a good idea to analyze it in detail and understand why the smart money isn’t behind this stock. This isn’t necessarily bad news. Although it is possible that hedge funds may think the stock is overpriced and view the stock as a short candidate, they may not be very familiar with the bullish thesis. In either case more research is warranted.
Disclosure: None
