Is TSHA A Good Stock To Buy Now?

Insider Monkey has processed numerous 13F filings of hedge funds and successful value investors to create an extensive database of hedge fund holdings. The 13F filings show the hedge funds’ and successful investors’ positions as of the end of the third quarter. You can find articles about an individual hedge fund’s trades on numerous financial news websites. However, in this article we will take a look at their collective moves over the last 5 years and analyze what the smart money thinks of Taysha Gene Therapies, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSHA) based on that data.

Is TSHA a good stock to buy now? Hedge funds were betting on the stock. The number of bullish hedge fund positions inched up by 15 in recent months. Taysha Gene Therapies, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSHA) was in 15 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. Our calculations also showed that TSHA 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.

Today there are many tools stock traders put to use to grade stocks. A pair of the most under-the-radar tools are hedge fund and insider trading sentiment. Our researchers have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the top investment managers can outclass the broader indices by a very impressive amount (see the details here).

James E. Flynn of Deerfield Management

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. Now let’s take a glance at the key hedge fund action regarding Taysha Gene Therapies, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSHA).

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

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2020, a total of 15 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 15 from the previous quarter. By comparison, 0 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in TSHA a year ago. So, let’s find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

The largest stake in Taysha Gene Therapies, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSHA) was held by Casdin Capital, which reported holding $18.4 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Tybourne Capital Management with a $11.2 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Perceptive Advisors, Sectoral Asset Management, and Deerfield Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Casdin Capital allocated the biggest weight to Taysha Gene Therapies, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSHA), around 0.82% of its 13F portfolio. Sectoral Asset Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.72 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to TSHA.

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, key money managers were breaking ground themselves. Casdin Capital, managed by Eli Casdin, assembled the largest position in Taysha Gene Therapies, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSHA). Casdin Capital had $18.4 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Eashwar Krishnan’s Tybourne Capital Management also made a $11.2 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new TSHA positions are Joseph Edelman’s Perceptive Advisors, Jerome Pfund and Michael Sjostrom’s Sectoral Asset Management, and James E. Flynn’s Deerfield Management.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Taysha Gene Therapies, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSHA). We will take a look at ATN International, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATNI), Twin River Worldwide Holdings Inc. (NYSE:TRWH), Huami Corporation (NYSE:HMI), Sohu.com Limited (NASDAQ:SOHU), RadNet Inc. (NASDAQ:RDNT), Columbus McKinnon Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCO), and ArcBest Corp (NASDAQ:ARCB). This group of stocks’ market caps match TSHA’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 13.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $70 million. That figure was $73 million in TSHA’s case. Twin River Worldwide Holdings Inc. (NYSE:TRWH) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Huami Corporation (NYSE:HMI) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. Taysha Gene Therapies, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSHA) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for TSHA is 74. 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 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 gained 30.7% in 2020 through December 14th and beat the market again by 15.8 percentage points. Unfortunately TSHA wasn’t nearly as popular as these 20 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on TSHA were disappointed as the stock returned -5.6% since the end of September (through 12/14) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds as many of these stocks already outperformed the market so far this year.

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