Was The Smart Money Right About Y-mAbs Therapeutics, Inc. (YMAB)?

Coronavirus is probably the #1 concern in investors’ minds right now. It should be. On February 27th we published an article with the title Recession is Imminent: We Need A Travel Ban NOW. We predicted that a US recession is imminent and US stocks will go down by at least 20% in the next 3-6 months. We also told you to short the market ETFs and buy long-term bonds. Investors who agreed with us and replicated these trades are up double digits whereas the market is down double digits. Our article also called for a total international travel ban to prevent the spread of the coronavirus especially from Europe. We were one step ahead of the markets and the president (see why hell is coming).

In these volatile markets we scrutinize hedge fund filings to get a reading on which direction each stock might be going. With this in mind let’s see whether Y-mAbs Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:YMAB) makes for a good investment at the moment. We analyze the sentiment of a select group of the very best investors in the world, who spend immense amounts of time and resources studying companies. They may not always be right (no one is), but data shows that their consensus long positions have historically outperformed the market when we adjust for known risk factors.

Y-mAbs Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:YMAB) has experienced an increase in hedge fund sentiment of late. Our calculations also showed that YMAB isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q4 rankings and see the video at the end of this article for Q3 rankings).

Israel Englander of Millennium Management

We leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, COVID-19 pandemic is still the main driver of stock prices. So we are checking out this trader’s corona catalyst trades. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. Our best call in 2020 was shorting the market when S&P 500 was trading at 3150 after realizing the coronavirus pandemic’s significance before most investors. With all of this in mind let’s take a glance at the new hedge fund action regarding Y-mAbs Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:YMAB).

How have hedgies been trading Y-mAbs Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:YMAB)?

At Q4’s end, a total of 12 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 50% from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in YMAB over the last 18 quarters. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of notable hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes substantially (or already accumulated large positions).

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Bihua Chen’s Cormorant Asset Management has the most valuable position in Y-mAbs Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:YMAB), worth close to $50.1 million, accounting for 2% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Perceptive Advisors, led by Joseph Edelman, holding a $17.6 million position; the fund has 0.3% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish consist of Richard Driehaus’s Driehaus Capital, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management and Brian Ashford-Russell and Tim Woolley’s Polar Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Burrage Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Y-mAbs Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:YMAB), around 3.91% of its 13F portfolio. Cormorant Asset Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 2 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to YMAB.

As one would reasonably expect, specific money managers have jumped into Y-mAbs Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:YMAB) headfirst. Burrage Capital Management, managed by Christiana Goh Bardon, created the most valuable position in Y-mAbs Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:YMAB). Burrage Capital Management had $5.8 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group also made a $2.2 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new YMAB positions are Ryan Tolkin (CIO)’s Schonfeld Strategic Advisors, D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw, and John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Y-mAbs Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:YMAB) but similarly valued. We will take a look at ShockWave Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ:SWAV), Hess Midstream Partners LP (NYSE:HESM), Knoll Inc (NYSE:KNL), and Raven Industries, Inc. (NASDAQ:RAVN). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to YMAB’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 14 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $71 million. That figure was $120 million in YMAB’s case. Knoll Inc (NYSE:KNL) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Hess Midstream Partners LP (NYSE:HESM) is the least popular one with only 9 bullish hedge fund positions. Y-mAbs Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:YMAB) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our calculations showed that top 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.4% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10.1 percentage points. These stocks gained 1.0% in 2020 through May 1st but still beat the market by 12.9 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on YMAB as the stock returned 3.6% during the same time period and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

Video: Click the image to watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

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