Hedge Funds Are Buying AlloVir, Inc. (ALVR)

Hedge funds and large money managers usually invest with a focus on the long-term horizon and, therefore, short-lived dips or bumps on the charts usually don’t make them change their opinion towards a company. This time it may be different. The coronavirus pandemic destroyed the high correlations among major industries and asset classes. We are now in a stock pickers market where fundamentals of a stock have more effect on the price than the overall direction of the market. As a result we observe sudden and large changes in hedge fund positions depending on the news flow. Let’s take a look at the hedge fund sentiment towards AlloVir, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALVR) to find out whether there were any major changes in hedge funds’ views.

Is AlloVir, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALVR) a great investment today? The best stock pickers were buying. The number of bullish hedge fund positions moved up by 1 recently. AlloVir, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALVR) was in 10 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistic is 11. Our calculations also showed that ALVR isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).

According to most investors, hedge funds are seen as underperforming, outdated investment vehicles of years past. While there are greater than 8000 funds trading at the moment, Our experts look at the bigwigs of this club, about 850 funds. It is estimated that this group of investors watch over most of the smart money’s total asset base, and by monitoring their finest stock picks, Insider Monkey has found a number of investment strategies that have historically beaten the S&P 500 index. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy exceeded the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points annually since its inception in March 2017. Also, our monthly newsletter’s portfolio of long stock picks returned 185.4% since March 2017 (through August 2021) and beat the S&P 500 Index by more than 79 percentage points. You can download a sample issue of this newsletter on our website .

Now let’s go over the latest hedge fund action regarding AlloVir, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALVR).

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

At second quarter’s end, a total of 10 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 11% from the first quarter of 2020. On the other hand, there were a total of 0 hedge funds with a bullish position in ALVR a year ago. So, let’s review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Redmile Group, managed by Jeremy Green, holds the largest position in AlloVir, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALVR). Redmile Group has a $31.3 million position in the stock, comprising 0.5% of its 13F portfolio. On Redmile Group’s heels is Woodline Partners, managed by Michael Rockefeller and KarláKroeker, which holds a $28.1 million position; the fund has 0.5% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other hedge funds and institutional investors with similar optimism encompass Panayotis Takis Sparaggis’s Alkeon Capital Management, Oleg Nodelman’s EcoR1 Capital and Israel Englander’s Millennium Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Woodline Partners allocated the biggest weight to AlloVir, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALVR), around 0.52% of its 13F portfolio. Redmile Group is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.46 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ALVR.

As aggregate interest increased, key hedge funds have been driving this bullishness. Millennium Management, managed by Israel Englander, established the largest position in AlloVir, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALVR). Millennium Management had $1.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp also made a $0.7 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new ALVR positions are Renaissance Technologies and Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as AlloVir, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALVR) but similarly valued. We will take a look at ChipMOS Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:IMOS), Stoke Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:STOK), New Gold Inc. (NYSE:NGD), S & T Bancorp Inc (NASDAQ:STBA), Piedmont Lithium Inc. (NASDAQ:PLL), ProAssurance Corporation (NYSE:PRA), and Hyster-Yale Materials Handling Inc (NYSE:HY). This group of stocks’ market values match ALVR’s market value.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 9.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $82 million. That figure was $95 million in ALVR’s case. Stoke Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:STOK) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand ChipMOS Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:IMOS) is the least popular one with only 2 bullish hedge fund positions. AlloVir, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALVR) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ALVR is 66.6. 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. 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 25.7% in 2021 through September 27th and still beat the market by 6.2 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on ALVR as the stock returned 20.2% since the end of Q2 (through 9/27) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.

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