After several tireless days we have finished crunching the numbers from nearly 900 13F filings issued by the elite hedge funds and other investment firms that we track at Insider Monkey, which disclosed those firms’ equity portfolios as of March 31st. The results of that effort will be put on display in this article, as we share valuable insight into the smart money sentiment towards QuickLogic Corporation (NASDAQ:QUIK).
Is QUIK a good stock to buy? QuickLogic Corporation (NASDAQ:QUIK) shares haven’t seen a lot of action during the second quarter. Overall, hedge fund sentiment was unchanged. The stock was in 3 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. Our calculations also showed that QUIK isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings). At the end of this article we will also compare QUIK to other stocks including Aware, Inc. (NASDAQ:AWRE), Delcath Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:DCTH), and Ekso Bionics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EKSO) to get a better sense of its popularity.
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.
Paul Marshall of Marshall Wace
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. Keeping this in mind let’s take a look at the recent hedge fund action encompassing QuickLogic Corporation (NASDAQ:QUIK).
Do Hedge Funds Think QUIK Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At first quarter’s end, a total of 3 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 0% from the previous quarter. By comparison, 1 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in QUIK a year ago. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of notable hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).
According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP has the largest position in QuickLogic Corporation (NASDAQ:QUIK), worth close to $1.9 million, corresponding to less than 0.1%% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Christopher Hillary of Roubaix Capital, with a $1.1 million position; 0.8% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Some other hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish include Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors and . In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Roubaix Capital allocated the biggest weight to QuickLogic Corporation (NASDAQ:QUIK), around 0.76% of its 13F portfolio. Marshall Wace LLP is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.01 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to QUIK.
Because QuickLogic Corporation (NASDAQ:QUIK) has experienced falling interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s safe to say that there lies a certain “tier” of fund managers who sold off their full holdings heading into Q2. Intriguingly, Anand Parekh’s Alyeska Investment Group dropped the biggest investment of all the hedgies tracked by Insider Monkey, valued at close to $0.2 million in stock. Renaissance Technologies, also said goodbye to its stock, about $0.1 million worth. These bearish behaviors are intriguing to say the least, as total hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).
Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as QuickLogic Corporation (NASDAQ:QUIK) but similarly valued. These stocks are Aware, Inc. (NASDAQ:AWRE), Delcath Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:DCTH), Ekso Bionics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EKSO), Monopar Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:MNPR), PolarityTE, Inc. (NASDAQ:PTE), Natural Health Trends Corp. (NASDAQ:NHTC), and 180 Degree Capital Corp. (NASDAQ:TURN). This group of stocks’ market valuations are similar to QUIK’s market valuation.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| AWRE | 4 | 7346 | 2 |
| DCTH | 8 | 13024 | -1 |
| EKSO | 4 | 3253 | 4 |
| MNPR | 1 | 77 | 1 |
| PTE | 7 | 2101 | -2 |
| NHTC | 1 | 6399 | -1 |
| TURN | 2 | 2431 | 0 |
| Average | 3.9 | 4947 | 0.4 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 3.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $5 million. That figure was $3 million in QUIK’s case. Delcath Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:DCTH) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Monopar Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:MNPR) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. QuickLogic Corporation (NASDAQ:QUIK) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for QUIK is 37.3. 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. 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 17.2% in 2021 through June 11th and surpassed the market again by 3.3 percentage points. Unfortunately QUIK wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); QUIK investors were disappointed as the stock returned -2.9% 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 most of these stocks already outperformed the market in 2021.
Follow Quicklogic Corp (NASDAQ:QUIK)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
