Do Hedge Funds Love ObsEva SA (OBSV)?

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. We at Insider Monkey have plowed through 866 13F filings that hedge funds and well-known value investors are required to file by the SEC. The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of March 31st. In this article we look at what those investors think of ObsEva SA (NASDAQ:OBSV).

ObsEva SA (NASDAQ:OBSV) shareholders have witnessed a decrease in hedge fund sentiment lately. ObsEva SA (NASDAQ:OBSV) was in 3 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 13. Our calculations also showed that OBSV isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

At the moment there are dozens of indicators stock market investors put to use to appraise their holdings. Two of the best indicators are hedge fund and insider trading activity. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the top hedge fund managers can outpace their index-focused peers by a very impressive amount (see the details here). Also, our monthly newsletter’s portfolio of long stock picks returned 206.8% since March 2017 (through May 2021) and beat the S&P 500 Index by more than 115 percentage points. You can download a sample issue of this newsletter on our website .

Peter Rathjens Arrowstreet Capital 394

Peter Rathjens of Arrowstreet Capital

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, an activist hedge fund wants to buy this $28 biotech stock for $50. So, we recommended a long position to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 10 best battery stocks to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. 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 homepage. Now let’s take a peek at the new hedge fund action surrounding ObsEva SA (NASDAQ:OBSV).

Do Hedge Funds Think OBSV Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?

At first quarter’s end, a total of 3 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -25% from the fourth quarter of 2020. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards OBSV over the last 23 quarters. So, let’s check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Is OBSV A Good Stock To Buy?

The largest stake in ObsEva SA (NASDAQ:OBSV) was held by Millennium Management, which reported holding $0.6 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Citadel Investment Group with a $0.6 million position. The only other hedge fund that is bullish on the company was Citadel Investment Group.

Because ObsEva SA (NASDAQ:OBSV) has witnessed bearish sentiment from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, logic holds that there was a specific group of money managers that elected to cut their full holdings in the first quarter. At the top of the heap, Renaissance Technologies dumped the biggest investment of the 750 funds followed by Insider Monkey, totaling close to $1.3 million in stock. Steve Cohen’s fund, Point72 Asset Management, also cut its stock, about $0.2 million worth. These bearish behaviors are intriguing to say the least, as total hedge fund interest fell by 1 funds in the first quarter.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as ObsEva SA (NASDAQ:OBSV) but similarly valued. These stocks are Genprex, Inc. (NASDAQ:GNPX), Midwest Holding Inc. (NASDAQ:MDWT), MOGU Inc. (NYSE:MOGU), ChoiceOne Financial Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:COFS), AG Mortgage Investment Trust Inc (NYSE:MITT), Marker Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:MRKR), and Satsuma Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:STSA). This group of stocks’ market valuations are closest to OBSV’s market valuation.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
GNPX 5 2388 4
MDWT 7 23330 -2
MOGU 3 21358 -3
COFS 1 402 -1
MITT 12 28134 1
MRKR 6 1418 1
STSA 14 85819 4
Average 6.9 23264 0.6

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 6.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $23 million. That figure was $2 million in OBSV’s case. Satsuma Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:STSA) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand ChoiceOne Financial Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:COFS) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. ObsEva SA (NASDAQ:OBSV) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for OBSV is 18.6. 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. This is a slightly negative signal and we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. Our calculations showed that top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 17.2% in 2021 through June 11th and surpassed the market again by 3.3 percentage points. Unfortunately OBSV wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); OBSV investors were disappointed as the stock returned -1.8% since the end of March (through 6/11) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market in 2021.

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