Is CRIS A Good Stock To Buy Now?

The 800+ hedge funds and famous money managers tracked by Insider Monkey have already compiled and submitted their 13F filings for the third quarter, which unveil their equity positions as of September 30. We went through these filings, fixed typos and other more significant errors and identified the changes in hedge fund portfolios. Our extensive review of these public filings is finally over, so this article is set to reveal the smart money sentiment towards Curis, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRIS).

Is CRIS a good stock to buy now? Prominent investors were buying. The number of long hedge fund bets went up by 2 recently. Curis, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRIS) was in 10 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistics is 13. Our calculations also showed that CRIS 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.

Today there are numerous tools market participants employ to size up publicly traded companies. Some of the less utilized tools are hedge fund and insider trading signals. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the elite money managers can trounce the broader indices by a solid amount (see the details here).

Michael Castor of Sio 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 we’re going to take a look at the new hedge fund action regarding Curis, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRIS).

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

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2020, a total of 10 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 25% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards CRIS over the last 21 quarters. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in Curis, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRIS) was held by Sio Capital, which reported holding $5.8 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Biotechnology Value Fund / BVF Inc with a $4.3 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Renaissance Technologies, OrbiMed Advisors, and Sabby Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Sio Capital allocated the biggest weight to Curis, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRIS), around 1.15% of its 13F portfolio. Biotechnology Value Fund / BVF Inc is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.23 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CRIS.

Consequently, some big names were leading the bulls’ herd. Pura Vida Investments, managed by Efrem Kamen, established the largest position in Curis, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRIS). Pura Vida Investments had $0.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital also initiated a $0 million position during the quarter.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Curis, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRIS) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Kingstone Companies Inc (NASDAQ:KINS), LightPath Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:LPTH), Riverview Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:RIVE), Golden Minerals Co (NYSE:AUMN), Qumu Corp (NASDAQ:QUMU), Zomedica Pharmaceuticals Corp. (NYSE:ZOM), and Medallion Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:MFIN). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to CRIS’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 3.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $4 million. That figure was $16 million in CRIS’s case. Medallion Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:MFIN) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Golden Minerals Co (NYSE:AUMN) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Curis, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRIS) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CRIS is 80.1. 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 returned 32.9% in 2020 through December 8th but still managed to beat the market by 16.2 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on CRIS as the stock returned 459.8% since the end of September (through 12/8) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin. Hedge funds were clearly right about piling into this stock relative to other stocks with similar market capitalizations.

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