Is Vislink Technologies, Inc. (VISL) A Good Stock To Buy?

The 800+ hedge funds and famous money managers tracked by Insider Monkey have already compiled and submitted their 13F filings for the first quarter, which unveil their equity positions as of March 31st. We went through these filings, fixed typos and other more significant errors and identified the changes in hedge fund portfolios. Our extensive review of these public filings is finally over, so this article is set to reveal the smart money sentiment towards Vislink Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:VISL).

Is VISL a good stock to buy? Vislink Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:VISL) has seen an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers of late. Vislink Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:VISL) was in 4 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic was 3. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. There were 1 hedge funds in our database with VISL holdings at the end of December. Our calculations also showed that VISL isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

Hedge funds’ reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn’t keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Our research has shown that hedge funds’ small-cap stock picks managed to beat the market by double digits annually between 1999 and 2016, but the margin of outperformance has been declining in recent years. Nevertheless, we were still able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by 115 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that underperformed the market by 10 percentage points annually between 2006 and 2017. Interestingly the margin of underperformance of these stocks has been increasing in recent years. Investors who are long the market and short these stocks would have returned more than 27% annually between 2015 and 2017. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 in our quarterly newsletter.

Matthew Hulsizer of PEAK6 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 $27 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 we’re going to take a look at the new hedge fund action surrounding Vislink Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:VISL).

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

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 4 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 300% from the fourth quarter of 2020. By comparison, 1 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in VISL a year ago. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Schonfeld Strategic Advisors, managed by Ryan Tolkin (CIO), holds the largest position in Vislink Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:VISL). Schonfeld Strategic Advisors has a $0.2 million position in the stock, comprising less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Citadel Investment Group, managed by Ken Griffin, which holds a $0.2 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other peers with similar optimism comprise Israel Englander’s Millennium Management, Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Schonfeld Strategic Advisors allocated the biggest weight to Vislink Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:VISL), around 0.0023% of its 13F portfolio. PEAK6 Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.0002 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to VISL.

As one would reasonably expect, some big names were leading the bulls’ herd. Schonfeld Strategic Advisors, managed by Ryan Tolkin (CIO), initiated the most valuable position in Vislink Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:VISL). Schonfeld Strategic Advisors had $0.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Israel Englander’s Millennium Management also initiated a $0.1 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new VISL positions are Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Vislink Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:VISL). We will take a look at Blueknight Energy Partners L.P. (NASDAQ:BKEP), Union Bankshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:UNB), AEterna Zentaris Inc. (NASDAQ:AEZS), Oblong Inc. (NYSE:OBLG), Nicholas Financial, Inc. (NASDAQ:NICK), CollPlant Biotechnologies Ltd. (NASDAQ:CLGN), and Lipocine Inc (NASDAQ:LPCN). All of these stocks’ market caps resemble VISL’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 2.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $10 million. That figure was $1 million in VISL’s case. Blueknight Energy Partners L.P. (NASDAQ:BKEP) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand CollPlant Biotechnologies Ltd. (NASDAQ:CLGN) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Vislink Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:VISL) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for VISL is 88. 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 VISL wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on VISL were disappointed as the stock returned 2% 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.

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