Is OXFD A Good Stock To Buy Now?

Many prominent investors, including Warren Buffett, David Tepper and Stan Druckenmiller, have been cautious regarding the current bull market and missed out as the stock market reached another high in recent weeks. On the other hand, technology hedge funds weren’t timid and registered double digit market beating gains. Financials, energy and industrial stocks aren’t doing great but many of the stocks that delivered strong returns since March are still going very strong and hedge funds actually increased their positions in these stocks. In this article we will find out how hedge fund sentiment to Oxford Immunotec Global PLC (NASDAQ:OXFD) changed recently.

Is OXFD a good stock to buy now? Oxford Immunotec Global PLC (NASDAQ:OXFD) was in 20 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 20. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. OXFD investors should be aware of an increase in hedge fund interest recently. There were 18 hedge funds in our database with OXFD holdings at the end of June. Our calculations also showed that OXFD 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).

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

In the eyes of most market participants, hedge funds are perceived as worthless, outdated investment tools of the past. While there are over 8000 funds with their doors open at present, Our experts choose to focus on the aristocrats of this club, about 850 funds. These investment experts handle most of all hedge funds’ total capital, and by paying attention to their unrivaled stock picks, Insider Monkey has determined many investment strategies that have historically outstripped the market. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy defeated the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points per annum since its inception in March 2017. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 13% since February 2017 (through November 17th) even though the market was up 65% during the same period. We just shared a list of 6 short targets in our latest quarterly update .

Paul Marshall of Marshall Wace

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 15 best blue chip stocks 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. 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 website. With all of this in mind let’s review the new hedge fund action regarding Oxford Immunotec Global PLC (NASDAQ:OXFD).

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

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2020, a total of 20 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 11% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 19 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in OXFD a year ago. So, let’s examine which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Among these funds, Polar Capital held the most valuable stake in Oxford Immunotec Global PLC (NASDAQ:OXFD), which was worth $30.1 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was Alyeska Investment Group which amassed $24.7 million worth of shares. Endurant Capital Management, Rima Senvest Management, and Millennium Management 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 Endurant Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Oxford Immunotec Global PLC (NASDAQ:OXFD), around 6.07% of its 13F portfolio. Birchview Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 1.33 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to OXFD.

Consequently, specific money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Water Island Capital, managed by John Orrico, established the most outsized position in Oxford Immunotec Global PLC (NASDAQ:OXFD). Water Island Capital had $1.8 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital also made a $1.4 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new OXFD positions are Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital, Alec Litowitz and Ross Laser’s Magnetar Capital, and Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Oxford Immunotec Global PLC (NASDAQ:OXFD). We will take a look at GTT Communications Inc (NYSE:GTT), Innate Pharma S.A. (NASDAQ:IPHA), Griffin Industrial Realty, Inc. (NASDAQ:GRIF), Gilat Satellite Networks Ltd. (NASDAQ:GILT), Gladstone Investment Corporation (NASDAQ:GAIN), Village Farms International, Inc. (NASDAQ:VFF), and NeoPhotonics Corp (NYSE:NPTN). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to OXFD’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $31 million. That figure was $136 million in OXFD’s case. NeoPhotonics Corp (NYSE:NPTN) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Innate Pharma S.A. (NASDAQ:IPHA) is the least popular one with only 2 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Oxford Immunotec Global PLC (NASDAQ:OXFD) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for OXFD is 87. 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 returned 30.7% in 2020 through December 14th but still managed to beat the market by 15.8 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on OXFD as the stock returned 34.7% since the end of September (through 12/14) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin. Hedge funds were clearly right about piling into this stock relative to other stocks with similar market capitalizations.

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