Is Aspira Women’s Health Inc. (AWH) A Good Stock To Buy?

Although the masses and most of the financial media blame hedge funds for their exorbitant fee structure and disappointing performance, these investors have proved to have great stock picking abilities over the years (that’s why their assets under management continue to swell). We believe hedge fund sentiment should serve as a crucial tool of an individual investor’s stock selection process, as it may offer great insights of how the brightest minds of the finance industry feel about specific stocks. After all, these people have access to smartest analysts and expensive data/information sources that individual investors can’t match. So should one consider investing in Aspira Women’s Health Inc. (NASDAQ:AWH)? The smart money sentiment can provide an answer to this question.

Is Aspira Women’s Health Inc. (NASDAQ:AWH) a buy right now? The smart money was becoming hopeful. The number of long hedge fund positions rose by 2 in recent months. Aspira Women’s Health Inc. (NASDAQ:AWH) was in 4 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistics is 5. Our calculations also showed that AWH 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 21st century investor’s toolkit there are plenty of formulas market participants employ to grade publicly traded companies. A pair of the most underrated formulas are hedge fund and insider trading interest. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best hedge fund managers can trounce the broader indices by a superb amount (see the details here).

Matthew Strobeck of Birchview 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 10 most profitable companies in the world 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. Keeping this in mind let’s take a glance at the new hedge fund action encompassing Aspira Women’s Health Inc. (NASDAQ:AWH).

How are hedge funds trading Aspira Women’s Health Inc. (NASDAQ:AWH)?

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2020, a total of 4 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 100% from the previous quarter. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in AWH over the last 21 quarters. With hedgies’ capital changing hands, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were adding to their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Birchview Capital, managed by Matthew Strobeck, holds the most valuable position in Aspira Women’s Health Inc. (NASDAQ:AWH). Birchview Capital has a $9.5 million position in the stock, comprising 6.4% of its 13F portfolio. On Birchview Capital’s heels is Ardsley Partners, led by Philip Hempleman, holding a $0.5 million position; 0.1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Some other hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish include Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and . In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Birchview Capital allocated the biggest weight to Aspira Women’s Health Inc. (NASDAQ:AWH), around 6.36% of its 13F portfolio. Ardsley Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.1 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to AWH.

Now, some big names have been driving this bullishness. AQR Capital Management, managed by Cliff Asness, initiated the biggest position in Aspira Women’s Health Inc. (NASDAQ:AWH). AQR Capital Management had $0.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group also initiated a $0 million position during the quarter.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Aspira Women’s Health Inc. (NASDAQ:AWH). We will take a look at Whole Earth Brands, Inc. (NASDAQ:FREE), Allot Ltd. (NASDAQ:ALLT), Avadel Pharmaceuticals plc (NASDAQ:AVDL), First Community Bancshares Inc (NASDAQ:FCBC), Modine Manufacturing Company (NYSE:MOD), Gamco Investors Inc. (NYSE:GBL), and Seneca Foods Corp. (NASDAQ:SENEB). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to AWH’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 11.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $50 million. That figure was $10 million in AWH’s case. Whole Earth Brands, Inc. (NASDAQ:FREE) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Seneca Foods Corp. (NASDAQ:SENEB) is the least popular one with only 2 bullish hedge fund positions. Aspira Women’s Health Inc. (NASDAQ:AWH) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for AWH is 36. 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 November 27th and still beat the market by 16.1 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on AWH as the stock returned 40.5% since the end of the third quarter (through 11/27) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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