Looking for high-potential stocks? Just follow the big players within the hedge fund industry. Why should you do so? Let’s take a brief look at what statistics have to say about hedge funds’ stock picking abilities to illustrate. The Standard and Poor’s 500 Index returned approximately 7.6% in the 12 months ending November 21, with more than 51% of the stocks in the index failing to beat the benchmark. Therefore, the odds that one will pin down a winner by randomly picking a stock are less than the odds in a fair coin-tossing game. Conversely, best performing hedge funds’ 30 preferred mid-cap stocks generated a return of 18% during the same 12-month period. Coincidence? It might happen to be so, but it is unlikely. Our research covering a 17-year period indicates that hedge funds’ stock picks generate superior risk-adjusted returns. That’s why we believe it is wise to check hedge fund activity before you invest your time or your savings on a stock like Uniqure NV (NASDAQ:QURE).
Uniqure NV (NASDAQ:QURE) investors should pay attention to a decrease in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds last quarter. There were 12 hedge funds in our database with QURE positions at the end of September. At the end of this article we will also compare QURE to other stocks including Kirkland’s, Inc. (NASDAQ:KIRK), HC2 Holdings Inc (NYSEMKT:HCHC), and Sterling Construction Company, Inc. (NASDAQ:STRL) to get a better sense of its popularity.
At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 18% gains over the past 12 months, more than doubling the 8% returns enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs.
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Keeping this in mind, we’re going to check out the key action regarding Uniqure NV (NASDAQ:QURE).
How are hedge funds trading Uniqure NV (NASDAQ:QURE)?
At Q3’s end, a total of 12 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, compared to 15 funds at the end of June. On the other hand, there were a total of 15 hedge funds with a bullish position in QURE at the beginning of this year. So, let’s check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Joseph Edelman’s Perceptive Advisors has the biggest position in Uniqure NV (NASDAQ:QURE), worth close to $10 million, amounting to 0.6% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Steve Cohen of Point72 Asset Management, with a $4.5 million position; less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Some other hedge funds and institutional investors with similar optimism encompass Samuel Isaly’s OrbiMed Advisors, Renaissance Technologies, one of the largest hedge funds in the world, and Julian Baker and Felix Baker’s Baker Bros. Advisors. 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.
