With the first-quarter round of 13F filings behind us it is time to take a look at the stocks in which some of the best money managers in the world preferred to invest or sell heading into the second quarter of 2021. One of these stocks was Jaguar Health, Inc. (NASDAQ:JAGX).
Is JAGX a good stock to buy? Jaguar Health, Inc. (NASDAQ:JAGX) has experienced an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers recently. Jaguar Health, Inc. (NASDAQ:JAGX) was in 5 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 3. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. There were 1 hedge funds in our database with JAGX positions at the end of the fourth quarter. Our calculations also showed that JAGX isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).
If you’d ask most market participants, hedge funds are perceived as slow, outdated investment vehicles of the past. While there are over 8000 funds with their doors open at present, We choose to focus on the top tier of this club, around 850 funds. These money managers have their hands on bulk of the hedge fund industry’s total capital, and by tracking their best investments, Insider Monkey has determined various 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. 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. Now let’s go over the new hedge fund action regarding Jaguar Health, Inc. (NASDAQ:JAGX).
Do Hedge Funds Think JAGX Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At the end of March, a total of 5 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 400% from the fourth quarter of 2020. On the other hand, there were a total of 0 hedge funds with a bullish position in JAGX a year ago. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were adding to their holdings meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).
Among these funds, Millennium Management held the most valuable stake in Jaguar Health, Inc. (NASDAQ:JAGX), which was worth $1.7 million at the end of the fourth quarter. On the second spot was Citadel Investment Group which amassed $0.3 million worth of shares. ExodusPoint Capital, Citadel Investment Group, 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 LMR Partners allocated the biggest weight to Jaguar Health, Inc. (NASDAQ:JAGX), around 0.003% of its 13F portfolio. ExodusPoint Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.0029 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to JAGX.
With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, some big names were leading the bulls’ herd. Citadel Investment Group, managed by Ken Griffin, created the most valuable call position in Jaguar Health, Inc. (NASDAQ:JAGX). Citadel Investment Group had $0.3 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital also initiated a $0.2 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new JAGX positions are Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, Renaissance Technologies, and Ben Levine, Andrew Manuel and Stefan Renold’s LMR Partners.
Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Jaguar Health, Inc. (NASDAQ:JAGX) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Paysign, Inc. (NASDAQ:PAYS), Galera Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:GRTX), Airgain, Inc. (NASDAQ:AIRG), Civeo Corporation (NYSE:CVEO), Norwood Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:NWFL), Lannett Company, Inc. (NYSE:LCI), and Harvard Bioscience, Inc. (NASDAQ:HBIO). This group of stocks’ market valuations are similar to JAGX’s market valuation.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| PAYS | 10 | 10196 | -3 |
| GRTX | 9 | 36818 | 1 |
| AIRG | 9 | 23229 | 2 |
| CVEO | 9 | 81883 | -2 |
| NWFL | 2 | 2430 | 0 |
| LCI | 10 | 21330 | 2 |
| HBIO | 10 | 40460 | -1 |
| Average | 8.4 | 30907 | -0.1 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 8.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $31 million. That figure was $2 million in JAGX’s case. Paysign, Inc. (NASDAQ:PAYS) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Norwood Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:NWFL) is the least popular one with only 2 bullish hedge fund positions. Jaguar Health, Inc. (NASDAQ:JAGX) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for JAGX is 57.8. 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 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 JAGX wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); JAGX investors were disappointed as the stock returned -10% 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.
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
