Is Pyxis Tankers Inc. (PXS) A Good Stock To Buy?

The financial regulations require hedge funds and wealthy investors that exceeded the $100 million holdings threshold to file a report that shows their positions at the end of every quarter. Even though it isn’t the intention, these filings to a certain extent level the playing field for ordinary investors. The latest round of 13F filings disclosed the funds’ positions on March 31st. We at Insider Monkey have made an extensive database of more than 866 of those established hedge funds and famous value investors’ filings. In this article, we analyze how these elite funds and prominent investors traded Pyxis Tankers Inc. (NASDAQ:PXS) based on those filings.

Is PXS a good stock to buy? Pyxis Tankers Inc. (NASDAQ:PXS) was in 3 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic was previously 2. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. PXS investors should pay attention to an increase in hedge fund sentiment in recent months. There were 2 hedge funds in our database with PXS holdings at the end of December. Our calculations also showed that PXS isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

In the financial world there are a large number of tools investors have at their disposal to grade stocks. A pair of the most under-the-radar tools are hedge fund and insider trading indicators. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best fund managers can outperform the broader indices by a solid amount. Insider Monkey’s monthly stock picks returned 206.8% since March 2017 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 115 percentage points (see the details here). That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is a useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

Sander Gerber of Hudson Bay Capital

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, an activist hedge fund wants to buy this $28 biotech stock for $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 analyze the key hedge fund action regarding Pyxis Tankers Inc. (NASDAQ:PXS).

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

At the end of March, a total of 3 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 50% from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards PXS over the last 23 quarters. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes substantially (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in Pyxis Tankers Inc. (NASDAQ:PXS) was held by Hudson Bay Capital Management, which reported holding $0.6 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Renaissance Technologies with a $0.4 million position. The only other hedge fund that is bullish on the company was Hudson Bay Capital Management.

As one would reasonably expect, some big names were leading the bulls’ herd. Hudson Bay Capital Management, managed by Sander Gerber, assembled the most outsized position in Pyxis Tankers Inc. (NASDAQ:PXS). Hudson Bay Capital Management had $0.6 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Israel Englander’s Millennium Management also made a $0 million investment in the stock during the quarter.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Pyxis Tankers Inc. (NASDAQ:PXS) but similarly valued. We will take a look at China Pharma Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CPHI), Xcel Brands Inc (NASDAQ:XELB), Integrated Media Technology Limited (NASDAQ:IMTE), NovaBay Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NYSE:NBY), CSP Inc. (NASDAQ:CSPI), Panbela Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:PBLA), and GigaMedia Limited (NASDAQ:GIGM). This group of stocks’ market valuations are closest to PXS’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 1.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1 million. That figure was $1 million in PXS’s case. Xcel Brands Inc (NASDAQ:XELB) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Integrated Media Technology Limited (NASDAQ:IMTE) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Pyxis Tankers Inc. (NASDAQ:PXS) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for PXS is 86. 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 positive signal but 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 17.2% in 2021 through June 11th and beat the market again by 3.3 percentage points. Unfortunately PXS wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on PXS were disappointed as the stock returned -10% since the end of March (through 6/11) 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 many of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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