Is AFMD A Good Stock To Buy Now?

A whopping number of 13F filings filed with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has been processed by Insider Monkey so that individual investors can look at the overall hedge fund sentiment towards the stocks included in their watchlists. These freshly-submitted public filings disclose money managers’ equity positions as of the end of the three-month period that ended September 30, so let’s proceed with the discussion of the hedge fund sentiment on Affimed NV (NASDAQ:AFMD).

Is AFMD a good stock to buy now? Affimed NV (NASDAQ:AFMD) has experienced an increase in hedge fund interest recently. Affimed NV (NASDAQ:AFMD) was in 16 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistic is 16. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that AFMD isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks).

Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

In the eyes of most market participants, hedge funds are viewed as unimportant, old investment vehicles of years past. While there are greater than 8000 funds in operation at present, Our experts choose to focus on the leaders of this group, approximately 850 funds. It is estimated that this group of investors shepherd the majority of all hedge funds’ total asset base, and by tailing their finest equity investments, Insider Monkey has unsheathed a number of investment strategies that have historically defeated the broader indices. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy exceeded the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points per annum since its inception in March 2017. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 13% since February 2017 (through November 17th) even though the market was up 65% during the same period. We just shared a list of 6 short targets in our latest quarterly update .

Michael Gelband of ExodusPoint Capital

At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost real estate prices. So, we recommended this real estate stock to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 15 best blue chip stocks to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. 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 website. Keeping this in mind let’s take a look at the fresh hedge fund action surrounding Affimed NV (NASDAQ:AFMD).

Do Hedge Funds Think AFMD Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2020, a total of 16 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 14% from the previous quarter. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in AFMD over the last 21 quarters. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management has the most valuable position in Affimed NV (NASDAQ:AFMD), worth close to $14.4 million, accounting for less than 0.1%% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Ari Zweiman of 683 Capital Partners, with a $12.4 million position; 0.9% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Remaining professional money managers with similar optimism consist of Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management and Kamran Moghtaderi’s Eversept Partners. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Stonepine Capital allocated the biggest weight to Affimed NV (NASDAQ:AFMD), around 1.26% of its 13F portfolio. DAFNA Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 1.02 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to AFMD.

Consequently, some big names have been driving this bullishness. Stonepine Capital, managed by Timothy P. Lynch, established the most valuable position in Affimed NV (NASDAQ:AFMD). Stonepine Capital had $1.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Guy Levy’s Soleus Capital also made a $0.2 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The only other fund with a new position in the stock is Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Affimed NV (NASDAQ:AFMD) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Aldeyra Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:ALDX), Orphazyme A/S (NASDAQ:ORPH), Sunlands Technology Group (NYSE:STG), Landec Corporation (NASDAQ:LNDC), Itamar Medical Ltd. (NASDAQ:ITMR), Biglari Holdings Inc (NYSE:BH), and Heritage Insurance Holdings Inc (NYSE:HRTG). This group of stocks’ market valuations are similar to AFMD’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 9.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $42 million. That figure was $61 million in AFMD’s case. Aldeyra Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:ALDX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Sunlands Technology Group (NYSE:STG) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Affimed NV (NASDAQ:AFMD) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for AFMD is 83.9. 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 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.3% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10 percentage points. These stocks gained 30.7% in 2020 through December 14th and still beat the market by 15.8 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on AFMD as the stock returned 107.4% since the end of Q3 (through 12/14) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.

Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.