The 800+ hedge funds and famous money managers tracked by Insider Monkey have already compiled and submitted their 13F filings for the third quarter, which unveil their equity positions as of September 30. 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 CEL-SCI Corporation (NYSE:CVM).
CEL-SCI Corporation (NYSE:CVM) was in 5 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistics is 6. CVM shareholders have witnessed a decrease in support from the world’s most elite money managers of late. There were 6 hedge funds in our database with CVM holdings at the end of June. Our calculations also showed that CVM isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks).
Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.
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 113% since March 2017 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 66 percentage points. Our short strategy outperformed the S&P 500 short ETFs by 20 percentage points annually (see the details here). That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is a useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.
Michael Gelband of ExodusPoint Capital
At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost real estate prices. So, we recommended this real estate stock to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 15 best blue chip stocks to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. 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 website. Keeping this in mind let’s take a look at the fresh hedge fund action regarding CEL-SCI Corporation (NYSE:CVM).
Hedge fund activity in CEL-SCI Corporation (NYSE:CVM)
At third quarter’s end, a total of 5 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -17% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 5 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in CVM a year ago. So, let’s find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
More specifically, D E Shaw was the largest shareholder of CEL-SCI Corporation (NYSE:CVM), with a stake worth $11.2 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing D E Shaw was Citadel Investment Group, which amassed a stake valued at $7.6 million. Sabby Capital, Sabby Capital, and Iridian Asset Management were also very fond of the stock, becoming one of the largest hedge fund holders of the company. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Sabby Capital allocated the biggest weight to CEL-SCI Corporation (NYSE:CVM), around 0.88% of its 13F portfolio. Sabby Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.21 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CVM.
Judging by the fact that CEL-SCI Corporation (NYSE:CVM) has experienced a decline in interest from the smart money, we can see that there were a few fund managers that decided to sell off their positions entirely by the end of the third quarter. At the top of the heap, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group sold off the biggest position of the 750 funds monitored by Insider Monkey, comprising an estimated $0.7 million in stock, and Chen Tianqiao’s Shanda Asset Management was right behind this move, as the fund cut about $0.5 million worth. These transactions are interesting, as total hedge fund interest fell by 1 funds by the end of the third quarter.
Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as CEL-SCI Corporation (NYSE:CVM) but similarly valued. These stocks are ADTRAN, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADTN), Hawkins, Inc. (NASDAQ:HWKN), Invesco Mortgage Capital Inc (NYSE:IVR), Mirum Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:MIRM), GAN Limited (NASDAQ:GAN), DMC Global Inc. (NASDAQ:BOOM), and Northfield Bancorp Inc (NASDAQ:NFBK). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to CVM’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| ADTN | 13 | 63994 | -4 |
| HWKN | 11 | 17961 | 2 |
| IVR | 9 | 13722 | -3 |
| MIRM | 9 | 179296 | -4 |
| GAN | 7 | 22574 | -4 |
| BOOM | 6 | 8271 | -3 |
| NFBK | 8 | 28193 | 1 |
| Average | 9 | 47716 | -2.1 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $48 million. That figure was $13 million in CVM’s case. ADTRAN, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADTN) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand DMC Global Inc. (NASDAQ:BOOM) is the least popular one with only 6 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks CEL-SCI Corporation (NYSE:CVM) is even less popular than BOOM. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CVM is 29. 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. Hedge funds dodged a bullet by taking a bearish stance towards CVM. Our calculations showed that the top 20 most popular hedge fund stocks returned 41.3% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10 percentage points. These stocks gained 30.7% in 2020 through November 27th but managed to beat the market again by 16.1 percentage points. Unfortunately CVM wasn’t nearly as popular as these 20 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was very bearish); CVM investors were disappointed as the stock returned 1.5% since the end of the third quarter (through 11/27) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market so far in 2020.
Follow Cel Sci Corp (NYSEMKT:CVM)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
