Is Biodesix, Inc. (BDSX) A Good Stock To Buy?

Our extensive research has shown that imitating the smart money can generate significant returns for retail investors, which is why we track nearly 900 active prominent money managers and analyze their quarterly 13F filings. The stocks that are heavily bought by hedge funds historically outperformed the market, though there is no shortage of high profile failures like hedge funds’ 2018 losses in Facebook and Apple. Let’s take a closer look at what the funds we track think about Biodesix, Inc. (NASDAQ:BDSX) in this article.

Is BDSX a good stock to buy? Biodesix, Inc. (NASDAQ:BDSX) shareholders have witnessed a decrease in hedge fund interest in recent months. Biodesix, Inc. (NASDAQ:BDSX) was in 5 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 8. Our calculations also showed that BDSX isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

According to most shareholders, hedge funds are assumed to be slow, outdated financial vehicles of years past. While there are more than 8000 funds trading today, Our researchers hone in on the top tier of this club, around 850 funds. It is estimated that this group of investors oversee bulk of all hedge funds’ total asset base, and by keeping track of their unrivaled investments, Insider Monkey has found a few investment strategies that have historically surpassed the market. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy exceeded the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points annually since its inception in March 2017. Also, our monthly newsletter’s portfolio of long stock picks returned 206.8% since March 2017 (through May 2021) and beat the S&P 500 Index by more than 115 percentage points. You can download a sample issue of this newsletter on our website .

Matthew Strobeck of Birchview Capital

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, an activist hedge fund owns nearly 40% of this $23 biotech stock and is trying to buy the rest for around $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. Now let’s analyze the key hedge fund action surrounding Biodesix, Inc. (NASDAQ:BDSX).

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

At the end of March, a total of 5 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -38% from the fourth quarter of 2020. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in BDSX over the last 23 quarters. So, let’s check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

More specifically, Birchview Capital was the largest shareholder of Biodesix, Inc. (NASDAQ:BDSX), with a stake worth $22.4 million reported as of the end of March. Trailing Birchview Capital was Millennium Management, which amassed a stake valued at $4.1 million. Parian Global Management, Driehaus Capital, and Citadel Investment Group were also very fond of the stock, becoming one of the largest hedge fund holders of the company. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Birchview Capital allocated the biggest weight to Biodesix, Inc. (NASDAQ:BDSX), around 13.32% of its 13F portfolio. Parian Global Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 1.08 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to BDSX.

Judging by the fact that Biodesix, Inc. (NASDAQ:BDSX) has experienced falling interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s easy to see that there exists a select few funds that elected to cut their full holdings last quarter. At the top of the heap, Anand Parekh’s Alyeska Investment Group dropped the largest investment of all the hedgies tracked by Insider Monkey, comprising about $1.3 million in stock. Michael Gelband’s fund, ExodusPoint Capital, also dropped its stock, about $0.8 million worth. These moves are interesting, as total hedge fund interest fell by 3 funds last quarter.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Biodesix, Inc. (NASDAQ:BDSX). We will take a look at Sierra Wireless, Inc. (NASDAQ:SWIR), Amryt Pharma plc (NASDAQ:AMYT), Amerant Bancorp Inc. (NASDAQ:AMTB), Timkensteel Corp (NYSE:TMST), Juniper Industrial Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:JIH), Cutera, Inc. (NASDAQ:CUTR), and Clarus Corporation (NASDAQ:CLAR). All of these stocks’ market caps are similar to BDSX’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 14.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $105 million. That figure was $31 million in BDSX’s case. Juniper Industrial Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:JIH) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Amerant Bancorp Inc. (NASDAQ:AMTB) is the least popular one with only 6 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Biodesix, Inc. (NASDAQ:BDSX) is even less popular than AMTB. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for BDSX is 20.8. 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. Hedge funds dodged a bullet by taking a bearish stance towards BDSX. Our calculations showed that the top 10 most popular hedge fund stocks returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 17.4% in 2021 through June 18th but managed to beat the market again by 6.1 percentage points. Unfortunately BDSX wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was very bearish); BDSX investors were disappointed as the stock returned -22.9% since the end of the first quarter (through 6/18) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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