Should I Buy VYNE Therapeutics Inc. (VYNE)?

Last year we predicted the arrival of the first US recession since 2009 and we told in advance that the market will decline by at least 20% in (Recession is Imminent: We Need A Travel Ban NOW). In these volatile markets we scrutinize hedge fund filings to get a reading on which direction each stock might be going. In this article, we will take a closer look at hedge fund sentiment towards VYNE Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:VYNE).

Is VYNE Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:VYNE) a buy right now? The best stock pickers were taking an optimistic view. The number of bullish hedge fund positions went up by 1 lately. VYNE Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:VYNE) was in 10 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the second quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 18. Our calculations also showed that VYNE isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings). There were 9 hedge funds in our database with VYNE holdings at the end of March.

Why do we pay any attention at all to hedge fund sentiment? Our research has shown that a select group of hedge fund holdings outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by 79 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is an extremely useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

Israel Englander of Millennium Management

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. We go through lists like the 10 best EV 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 we’re going to go over the fresh hedge fund action regarding VYNE Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:VYNE).

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

At Q2’s end, a total of 10 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 11% from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in VYNE over the last 24 quarters. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes substantially (or already accumulated large positions).

According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Perceptive Advisors, managed by Joseph Edelman, holds the number one position in VYNE Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:VYNE). Perceptive Advisors has a $20.3 million position in the stock, comprising 0.3% of its 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is 683 Capital Partners, led by Ari Zweiman, holding a $2.6 million position; 0.1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Other peers with similar optimism encompass Israel Englander’s Millennium Management, Joe Riccardo’s Healthcare Value Capital and Renaissance Technologies. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Healthcare Value Capital allocated the biggest weight to VYNE Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:VYNE), around 3.15% of its 13F portfolio. Perceptive Advisors is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.26 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to VYNE.

Consequently, key money managers have been driving this bullishness. 683 Capital Partners, managed by Ari Zweiman, established the biggest position in VYNE Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:VYNE). 683 Capital Partners had $2.6 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Renaissance Technologies also initiated a $1.1 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new VYNE investors: Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as VYNE Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:VYNE) but similarly valued. We will take a look at inTEST Corporation (NYSE:INTT), Lakeland Industries, Inc. (NASDAQ:LAKE), First Northwest Bancorp (NASDAQ:FNWB), T2 Biosystems Inc (NASDAQ:TTOO), PhaseBio Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:PHAS), FAT Brands Inc. (NASDAQ:FAT), and BurgerFi International, Inc. (NASDAQ:BFI). This group of stocks’ market valuations are closest to VYNE’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $22 million. That figure was $29 million in VYNE’s case. inTEST Corporation (NYSE:INTT) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand FAT Brands Inc. (NASDAQ:FAT) is the least popular one with only 3 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks VYNE Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:VYNE) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for VYNE is 72.7. 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 25.7% in 2021 through September 27th and still beat the market by 6.2 percentage points. Unfortunately VYNE wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on VYNE were disappointed as the stock returned -56.7% since the end of the second quarter (through 9/27) 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 since 2019.

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