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 Oramed Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:ORMP).
Oramed Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:ORMP) shareholders have witnessed a decrease in hedge fund sentiment of late. Oramed Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:ORMP) was in 4 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 7. There were 6 hedge funds in our database with ORMP holdings at the end of December. Our calculations also showed that ORMP 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.
John Zaro of Bourgeon 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 review the fresh hedge fund action encompassing Oramed Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:ORMP).
Do Hedge Funds Think ORMP Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At Q1’s end, a total of 4 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -33% from the previous quarter. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in ORMP over the last 23 quarters. With hedgies’ capital changing hands, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).
When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Millennium Management, managed by Israel Englander, holds the number one position in Oramed Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:ORMP). Millennium Management has a $1.6 million position in the stock, comprising less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Citadel Investment Group, led by Ken Griffin, holding a $1.3 million call position; less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Other peers that are bullish comprise Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and John Zaro’s Bourgeon Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Bourgeon Capital allocated the biggest weight to Oramed Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:ORMP), around 0.01% of its 13F portfolio. ExodusPoint Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 0.01 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ORMP.
Judging by the fact that Oramed Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:ORMP) has witnessed declining sentiment from the aggregate hedge fund industry, we can see that there lies a certain “tier” of money managers who sold off their positions entirely last quarter. At the top of the heap, Renaissance Technologies dropped the largest stake of the “upper crust” of funds monitored by Insider Monkey, totaling about $1.6 million in stock, and Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP was right behind this move, as the fund dumped about $0.2 million worth. These bearish behaviors are important to note, as aggregate hedge fund interest fell by 2 funds last quarter.
Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Oramed Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:ORMP). These stocks are The Cato Corporation (NYSE:CATO), Platinum Group Metals Limited (NYSE:PLG), Value Line, Inc. (NASDAQ:VALU), Vincerx Pharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:VINC), Cerecor Inc. (NASDAQ:CERC), BioVie Inc. (NASDAQ:BIVI), and Park Aerospace Corp. (NYSE:PKE). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to ORMP’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| CATO | 14 | 20138 | 2 |
| PLG | 6 | 5348 | -1 |
| VALU | 2 | 2401 | 0 |
| VINC | 16 | 88367 | 5 |
| CERC | 10 | 145224 | 2 |
| BIVI | 1 | 447 | 0 |
| PKE | 8 | 33491 | -5 |
| Average | 8.1 | 42202 | 0.4 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 8.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $42 million. That figure was $2 million in ORMP’s case. Vincerx Pharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:VINC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand BioVie Inc. (NASDAQ:BIVI) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Oramed Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:ORMP) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ORMP is 30.1. 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 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 still beat the market by 3.3 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on ORMP as the stock returned 39.5% since the end of the first quarter (through 6/11) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
