Assembly Biosciences Inc (ASMB): Are Hedge Funds Right About This Stock?

Seeing as Assembly Biosciences, Inc (NASDAQ:ASMB) has experienced a decline in interest from hedge fund managers, logic holds that there was a specific group of hedgies that decided to sell off their full holdings in the third quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Ken Greenberg and David Kim’s Ghost Tree Capital cut the biggest stake of all the hedgies tracked by Insider Monkey, totaling an estimated $3.4 million in stock, and Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies was right behind this move, as the fund dumped about $0.2 million worth of shares. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 2 funds in the third quarter.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Assembly Biosciences Inc (NASDAQ:ASMB) but similarly valued. These stocks are Allot Communications Ltd. (NASDAQ:ALLT), Emerge Energy Services LP (NYSE:EMES), Orion Marine Group, Inc. (NYSE:ORN), and UFP Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:UFPT). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble ASMB’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 8 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $21 million. That figure was $74 million in ASMB’s case. Orion Marine Group, Inc. (NYSE:ORN) is the most popular stock in this table, while Emerge Energy Services LP (NYSE:EMES) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. Assembly Biosciences Inc (NASDAQ:ASMB) is not the most popular stock in this group, but hedge fund interest is still above average. This is a slightly positive signal, but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard ORN might be a better candidate to consider a long position.