We have been waiting for this for a year and finally the third quarter ended up showing a nice bump in the performance of small-cap stocks. Both the S&P 500 and Russell 2000 were up since the end of the second quarter, but small-cap stocks outperformed the large-cap stocks by double digits. This is important for hedge funds, which are big supporters of small-cap stocks, because their investors started pulling some of their capital out due to poor recent performance. It is very likely that equity hedge funds will deliver better risk adjusted returns in the second half of this year. In this article we are going to look at how this recent market trend affected the sentiment of hedge funds towards ZIOPHARM Oncology Inc. (NASDAQ:ZIOP), and what that likely means for the prospects of the company and its stock.
ZIOPHARM Oncology Inc. (NASDAQ:ZIOP) investors should pay attention to a decrease in enthusiasm from smart money in recent months. ZIOP was in 7 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. There were 11 hedge funds in our database with ZIOP holdings at the end of the previous quarter. The level and the change in hedge fund popularity aren’t the only variables you need to analyze to decipher hedge funds’ perspectives. A stock may witness a boost in popularity but it may still be less popular than similarly priced stocks. That’s why at the end of this article we will examine companies such as PBF Logistics LP (NYSE:PBFX), General Cable Corporation (NYSE:BGC), and Chatham Lodging Trust (NYSE:CLDT) to gather more data points.
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Keeping this in mind, let’s review the latest action regarding ZIOPHARM Oncology Inc. (NASDAQ:ZIOP).
How have hedgies been trading ZIOPHARM Oncology Inc. (NASDAQ:ZIOP)?
Heading into the fourth quarter of 2016, a total of 7 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a drop of 36% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 12 hedge funds with a bullish position in ZIOP at the beginning of this year. So, let’s review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, MSDC Management, led by Marc Lisker, Glenn Fuhrman and John Phelan, holds the number one position in ZIOPHARM Oncology Inc. (NASDAQ:ZIOP). According to regulatory filings, the fund has a $19.2 million position in the stock, comprising 1.5% of its 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Renaissance Technologies, one of the largest hedge funds in the world, which oversees a $1.8 million position; less than 0.1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Some other hedge funds and institutional investors that hold long positions comprise Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and Daniel S. Och’s OZ Management. We should note that none of these hedge funds are among our list of the 100 best performing hedge funds which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-microcap stocks.
