Is Intrusion Inc. (INTZ) A Good Stock To Buy?

We know that hedge funds generate strong, risk-adjusted returns over the long run, therefore imitating the picks that they are collectively bullish on can be a profitable strategy for retail investors. With billions of dollars in assets, smart money investors have to conduct complex analyses, spend many resources and use tools that are not always available for the general crowd. This doesn’t mean that they don’t have occasional colossal losses; they do (like Melvin Capital’s recent GameStop losses). However, it is still a good idea to keep an eye on hedge fund activity. With this in mind, as the current round of 13F filings has just ended, let’s examine the smart money sentiment towards Intrusion Inc. (NASDAQ:INTZ).

Is INTZ a good stock to buy? Investors who are in the know were becoming more confident. The number of long hedge fund positions rose by 2 lately. Intrusion Inc. (NASDAQ:INTZ) was in 5 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic was 3. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that INTZ isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings). There were 3 hedge funds in our database with INTZ holdings at the end of December.

In today’s marketplace there are dozens of tools stock traders employ to evaluate stocks. A couple of the best tools are hedge fund and insider trading activity. Our researchers have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best money managers can beat their index-focused peers by a healthy amount (see the details here). 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 .

Michael Gelband of ExodusPoint 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. Keeping this in mind we’re going to view the recent hedge fund action regarding Intrusion Inc. (NASDAQ:INTZ).

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

Heading into the second quarter of 2021, a total of 5 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 67% from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards INTZ over the last 23 quarters. So, let’s examine which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

The largest stake in Intrusion Inc. (NASDAQ:INTZ) was held by Millennium Management, which reported holding $3.5 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Arrowstreet Capital with a $0.9 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included ExodusPoint Capital, Pentwater Capital Management, and Citadel Investment Group. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position ExodusPoint Capital allocated the biggest weight to Intrusion Inc. (NASDAQ:INTZ), around 0.01% of its 13F portfolio. Pentwater Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.01 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to INTZ.

Now, specific money managers have jumped into Intrusion Inc. (NASDAQ:INTZ) headfirst. Arrowstreet Capital, managed by Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell, created the largest position in Intrusion Inc. (NASDAQ:INTZ). Arrowstreet Capital had $0.9 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group also initiated a $0.2 million position during the quarter.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Intrusion Inc. (NASDAQ:INTZ) but similarly valued. We will take a look at South Plains Financial, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPFI), Profound Medical Corp. (NASDAQ:PROF), Aenza S.A.A. (NYSE:AENZ), JOANN Inc. (NASDAQ:JOAN), Red River Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:RRBI), Diginex Limited (NASDAQ:EQOS), and ShotSpotter, Inc. (NASDAQ:SSTI). This group of stocks’ market caps are similar to INTZ’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 6.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $74 million. That figure was $6 million in INTZ’s case. Profound Medical Corp. (NASDAQ:PROF) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Aenza S.A.A. (NYSE:AENZ) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Intrusion Inc. (NASDAQ:INTZ) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for INTZ is 52.4. 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 negative signal and we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. Our calculations showed that top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds 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 and surpassed the market again by 6.1 percentage points. Unfortunately INTZ wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); INTZ investors were disappointed as the stock returned -39.5% since the end of March (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 in 2021.

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