Is Greenlane Holdings, Inc. (GNLN) A Good Stock To Buy?

After several tireless days we have finished crunching the numbers from nearly 817 13F filings issued by the elite hedge funds and other investment firms that we track at Insider Monkey, which disclosed those firms’ equity portfolios as of September 30th. The results of that effort will be put on display in this article, as we share valuable insight into the smart money sentiment towards Greenlane Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:GNLN).

Greenlane Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:GNLN) shares haven’t seen a lot of action during the second quarter. Overall, hedge fund sentiment was unchanged. The stock was in 4 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. Our calculations also showed that GNLN 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). At the end of this article we will also compare GNLN to other stocks including On Deck Capital Inc (NYSE:ONDK), Oak Valley Bancorp (CA) (NASDAQ:OVLY), and Westwood Holdings Group, Inc. (NYSE:WHG) to get a better sense of its popularity.

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

In the financial world there are a large number of methods market participants put to use to size up stocks. Some of the most underrated methods are hedge fund and insider trading activity. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the elite money managers can beat their index-focused peers by a very impressive amount (see the details here).

Louis Bacon Moore of Moore 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. With all of this in mind we’re going to check out the latest hedge fund action surrounding Greenlane Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:GNLN).

How have hedgies been trading Greenlane Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:GNLN)?

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 0% from the second quarter of 2020. On the other hand, there were a total of 6 hedge funds with a bullish position in GNLN a year ago. So, let’s check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Pura Vida Investments, managed by Efrem Kamen, holds the most valuable position in Greenlane Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:GNLN). Pura Vida Investments has a $0.9 million position in the stock, comprising less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Moore Global Investments, managed by Louis Bacon, which holds a $0.8 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other professional money managers that hold long positions contain Joe Riccardo’s Healthcare Value Capital, Murray Stahl’s Horizon Asset Management and . In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Healthcare Value Capital allocated the biggest weight to Greenlane Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:GNLN), around 1.85% of its 13F portfolio. Pura Vida Investments is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.05 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to GNLN.

Earlier we told you that the aggregate hedge fund interest in the stock was unchanged and we view this as a negative development. Even though there weren’t any hedge funds dumping their holdings during the third quarter, there weren’t any hedge funds initiating brand new positions. This indicates that hedge funds, at the very best, perceive this stock as dead money and they haven’t identified any viable catalysts that can attract investor attention.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Greenlane Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:GNLN) but similarly valued. These stocks are On Deck Capital Inc (NYSE:ONDK), Oak Valley Bancorp (CA) (NASDAQ:OVLY), Westwood Holdings Group, Inc. (NYSE:WHG), Bionano Genomics, Inc. (NASDAQ:BNGO), Pareteum Corporation (NASDAQ:TEUM), Ultralife Corp. (NASDAQ:ULBI), and Solid Biosciences Inc. (NASDAQ:SLDB). This group of stocks’ market valuations are closest to GNLN’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $10 million. That figure was $2 million in GNLN’s case. On Deck Capital Inc (NYSE:ONDK) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Oak Valley Bancorp (CA) (NASDAQ:OVLY) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Greenlane Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:GNLN) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for GNLN is 37.5. 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 GNLN as the stock returned 58.5% 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.