A whopping number of 13F filings filed with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has been processed by Insider Monkey so that individual investors can look at the overall hedge fund sentiment towards the stocks included in their watchlists. These freshly-submitted public filings disclose money managers’ equity positions as of the end of the three-month period that ended June 30th, so let’s proceed with the discussion of the hedge fund sentiment on La Jolla Pharmaceutical Company (NASDAQ:LJPC).
La Jolla Pharmaceutical Company (NASDAQ:LJPC) investors should pay attention to an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers in recent months. La Jolla Pharmaceutical Company (NASDAQ:LJPC) was in 10 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistic is 21. There were 9 hedge funds in our database with LJPC positions at the end of the first quarter. Our calculations also showed that LJPC isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).
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Paul Marshall of Marshall Wace
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Do Hedge Funds Think LJPC Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At the end of the second quarter, a total of 10 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 11% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 8 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in LJPC a year ago. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings substantially (or already accumulated large positions).
Among these funds, Tang Capital Management held the most valuable stake in La Jolla Pharmaceutical Company (NASDAQ:LJPC), which was worth $43 million at the end of the second quarter. On the second spot was D E Shaw which amassed $2.8 million worth of shares. Millennium Management, Two Sigma Advisors, and Citadel Investment Group 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 Tang Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to La Jolla Pharmaceutical Company (NASDAQ:LJPC), around 8.56% of its 13F portfolio. PDT Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.003 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to LJPC.
Now, specific money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Citadel Investment Group, managed by Ken Griffin, established the biggest position in La Jolla Pharmaceutical Company (NASDAQ:LJPC). Citadel Investment Group had $0.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP also initiated a $0.1 million position during the quarter. The only other fund with a new position in the stock is Ben Levine, Andrew Manuel and Stefan Renold’s LMR Partners.
Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as La Jolla Pharmaceutical Company (NASDAQ:LJPC) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Agile Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:AGRX), United Bancshares Inc. (NASDAQ:UBOH), Capricor Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:CAPR), Avinger Inc (NASDAQ:AVGR), Ohio Valley Banc Corp. (NASDAQ:OVBC), American Virtual Cloud Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVCT), and Liminal BioSciences Inc. (NASDAQ:LMNL). This group of stocks’ market values resemble LJPC’s market value.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| AGRX | 8 | 24802 | 2 |
| UBOH | 1 | 10648 | 0 |
| CAPR | 2 | 426 | -1 |
| AVGR | 2 | 417 | -1 |
| OVBC | 3 | 3004 | 2 |
| AVCT | 3 | 830 | 0 |
| LMNL | 1 | 188 | 1 |
| Average | 2.9 | 5759 | 0.4 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 2.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $6 million. That figure was $48 million in LJPC’s case. Agile Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:AGRX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand United Bancshares Inc. (NASDAQ:UBOH) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks La Jolla Pharmaceutical Company (NASDAQ:LJPC) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for LJPC is 70.3. 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 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 25.7% in 2021 through September 27th and still beat the market by 6.2 percentage points. Unfortunately LJPC wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on LJPC were disappointed as the stock returned -4.9% since the end of the second quarter (through 9/27) 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 since 2019.
Follow La Jolla Pharmaceutical Co (NASDAQ:LJPC)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
