Wasatch Micro Cap Fund recently released its Q3 2020 Investor Letter, a copy of which you can download here. The fund posted a return of 12.2% for the quarter, outperforming its benchmark, the Russell Microcap Index which returned 3.69% in the same quarter. You should check out Wasatch’s top 5 stock picks for investors to buy right now, which could be the biggest winners of 2021.
In the Q3 2020 Investor Letter, Wasatch highlighted a few stocks and Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:INO) is one of them. Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:INO) is a biotechnology company. Year-to-date, Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:INO) stock gained 210.9% and on December 24th it had a closing price of $10.26. Here is what Wasatch said:
“The greatest detractor from Fund performance for the quarter was Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (INO). A biotechnology company, Inovio is developing a Covid-19 vaccine candidate, INO-4800. Following an upswell of optimism from March through June, the company’s stock price headed lower during the third quarter amid worries that Inovio may be falling behind its competitors in the race to develop a vaccine for the disease. Concerns grew in late September after the company disclosed in a press release that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had placed a partial hold on a combined Phase 2/3 clinical trial of INO-4800 that Inovio had planned to initiate by the end of the month. According to the company, the FDA had additional questions, including about the vaccine-delivery device to be used in the study.
On the positive side, Inovio stated that the FDA’s partial hold did not result from any adverse events in its ongoing Phase 1 trial. Additionally, the hold does not affect the advancement of the company’s other pipeline assets. Should INO-4800 eventually gain approval, we think its advantages— especially with respect to safety, storage and administration—would position it as a potentially valuable weapon in the vaccine arsenal that will be needed to quell the pandemic. Inovio’s DNA medicines currently in development for various cancers and pre-cancers also offer meaningful upside potential, in our view.”
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In Q3 2020, the number of bullish hedge fund positions on Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:INO) stock increased by about 14% from the previous quarter (see the chart here), so a number of other hedge fund managers believe in Inovio’s growth potential. Our calculations showed that Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:INO) isn’t ranked among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds.
The top 10 stocks among hedge funds returned 216% since the end of 2014 and outperformed the S&P 500 Index ETFs by more than 121 percentage points. We know it sounds unbelievable. You have been dismissing our articles about top hedge fund stocks mostly because you were fed biased information by other media outlets about hedge funds’ poor performance. You could have doubled the size of your nest egg by investing in the top hedge fund stocks instead of dumb S&P 500 ETFs. Below you can watch our video about the top 5 hedge fund stocks right now. All of these stocks had positive returns in 2020.
Video: Top 5 Stocks Among Hedge Funds
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.