The financial regulations require hedge funds and wealthy investors that exceeded the $100 million equity holdings threshold to file a report that shows their positions at the end of every quarter. Even though it isn’t the intention, these filings to a certain extent level the playing field for ordinary investors. The latest round of 13F filings disclosed the funds’ positions on September 30th, about a month before the elections. We at Insider Monkey have made an extensive database of more than 817 of those established hedge funds and famous value investors’ filings. In this article, we analyze how these elite funds and prominent investors traded Evolus, Inc. (NASDAQ:EOLS) based on those filings.
Is EOLS a good stock to buy now? EOLS has experienced an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers in recent months. Evolus, Inc. (NASDAQ:EOLS) was in 10 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistics is 15. Our calculations also showed that EOLS 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.
To most stock holders, hedge funds are assumed to be slow, old financial vehicles of yesteryear. While there are more than 8000 funds trading at present, Our experts look at the bigwigs of this group, around 850 funds. These hedge fund managers manage bulk of the smart money’s total capital, and by following their matchless investments, Insider Monkey has come up with several investment strategies that have historically outpaced the market. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy outstripped the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points a year 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 .
Daniel Och, Founder of OZ Management
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. Now let’s take a look at the new hedge fund action regarding Evolus, Inc. (NASDAQ:EOLS).
Do Hedge Funds Think EOLS Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At third quarter’s end, a total of 10 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 11% from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards EOLS over the last 21 quarters. So, let’s examine which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
More specifically, Citadel Investment Group was the largest shareholder of Evolus, Inc. (NASDAQ:EOLS), with a stake worth $1.3 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Citadel Investment Group was Palo Alto Investors, which amassed a stake valued at $1 million. Pura Vida Investments, OZ Management, and Renaissance Technologies 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 Algert Coldiron Investors allocated the biggest weight to Evolus, Inc. (NASDAQ:EOLS), around 0.07% of its 13F portfolio. Palo Alto Investors is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.06 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to EOLS.
As industrywide interest jumped, specific money managers were breaking ground themselves. Palo Alto Investors, managed by William Leland Edwards, initiated the biggest position in Evolus, Inc. (NASDAQ:EOLS). Palo Alto Investors had $1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Renaissance Technologies also initiated a $0.3 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new EOLS positions are Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, and Donald Sussman’s Paloma Partners.
Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Evolus, Inc. (NASDAQ:EOLS) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Actinium Pharmaceuticals Inc (NYSE:ATNM), Minerva Neurosciences, Inc (NASDAQ:NERV), Genprex, Inc. (NASDAQ:GNPX), AgEagle Aerial Systems, Inc. (NYSE:UAVS), Atento SA (NYSE:ATTO), Intevac, Inc. (NASDAQ:IVAC), and Alithya Group inc. (NASDAQ:ALYA). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to EOLS’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| ATNM | 6 | 10618 | -1 |
| NERV | 15 | 11835 | 1 |
| GNPX | 2 | 311 | -1 |
| UAVS | 3 | 370 | 2 |
| ATTO | 5 | 13150 | -1 |
| IVAC | 6 | 15293 | 0 |
| ALYA | 4 | 8460 | 0 |
| Average | 5.9 | 8577 | 0 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 5.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $9 million. That figure was $2 million in EOLS’s case. Minerva Neurosciences, Inc (NASDAQ:NERV) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Genprex, Inc. (NASDAQ:GNPX) is the least popular one with only 2 bullish hedge fund positions. Evolus, Inc. (NASDAQ:EOLS) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for EOLS is 56.8. 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. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. 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 32.9% in 2020 through December 8th and beat the market again by 16.2 percentage points. Unfortunately EOLS wasn’t nearly as popular as these 20 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on EOLS were disappointed as the stock returned -2.3% since the end of September (through 12/8) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds as many of these stocks already outperformed the market so far this year.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
