Hedge Funds Are Buying Incyte Corporation (INCY)

Is Incyte Corporation (NASDAQ:INCY) a buy, sell, or hold? Investors who are in the know are taking an optimistic view. The number of bullish hedge fund positions advanced by 1 lately.

If you’d ask most investors, hedge funds are seen as underperforming, outdated financial tools of years past. While there are over 8000 funds trading today, we at Insider Monkey look at the bigwigs of this club, close to 450 funds. It is estimated that this group oversees most of all hedge funds’ total capital, and by paying attention to their top stock picks, we have unsheathed a number of investment strategies that have historically beaten the market. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outpaced the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points annually for a decade in our back tests, and since we’ve started sharing our picks with our subscribers at the end of August 2012, we have outperformed the S&P 500 index by 23.3 percentage points in 8 months (see all of our picks from August).

Incyte Corporation (NASDAQ:INCY)Equally as integral, positive insider trading activity is a second way to break down the stock market universe. There are many stimuli for a corporate insider to downsize shares of his or her company, but just one, very clear reason why they would initiate a purchase. Many academic studies have demonstrated the valuable potential of this method if piggybackers know what to do (learn more here).

Consequently, let’s take a gander at the latest action regarding Incyte Corporation (NASDAQ:INCY).

What have hedge funds been doing with Incyte Corporation (NASDAQ:INCY)?

At Q1’s end, a total of 16 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of 7% from the first quarter. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes meaningfully.

Of the funds we track, Baker Bros. Advisors, managed by Julian Baker and Felix Baker, holds the most valuable position in Incyte Corporation (NASDAQ:INCY). Baker Bros. Advisors has a $346.7 million position in the stock, comprising 6.9% of its 13F portfolio. On Baker Bros. Advisors’s heels is Jerome Pfund and Michael Sjostrom of Sectoral Asset Management, with a $182.7 million position; the fund has 5.6% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining peers that are bullish include Samuel Isaly’s OrbiMed Advisors, Sean Cullinan’s Point State Capital and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group.

As one would reasonably expect, key hedge funds have jumped into Incyte Corporation (NASDAQ:INCY) headfirst. Point State Capital, managed by Sean Cullinan, established the largest position in Incyte Corporation (NASDAQ:INCY). Point State Capital had 42.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors also made a $2.5 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new INCY positions are Anand Parekh’s Alyeska Investment Group, Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital, and Glenn Russell Dubin’s Highbridge Capital Management.

How have insiders been trading Incyte Corporation (NASDAQ:INCY)?

Bullish insider trading is best served when the company in focus has experienced transactions within the past six months. Over the last 180-day time period, Incyte Corporation (NASDAQ:INCY) has experienced 1 unique insiders purchasing, and 6 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

Let’s check out hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to Incyte Corporation (NASDAQ:INCY). These stocks are Infinity Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:INFI), Theravance Inc (NASDAQ:THRX), Medivation Inc (NASDAQ:MDVN), Ariad Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ARIA), and Jazz Pharmaceuticals plc – Ordinary Shares (NASDAQ:JAZZ). This group of stocks belong to the biotechnology industry and their market caps are closest to INCY’s market cap.

Company Name # of Hedge Funds # of Insiders Buying # of Insiders Selling
Infinity Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:INFI) 22 0 4
Theravance Inc (NASDAQ:THRX) 17 1 4
Medivation Inc (NASDAQ:MDVN) 34 0 3
Ariad Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ARIA) 30 0 11
Jazz Pharmaceuticals plc – Ordinary Shares (NASDAQ:JAZZ) 26 0 6

With the results demonstrated by the aforementioned studies, retail investors should always pay attention to hedge fund and insider trading activity, and Incyte Corporation (NASDAQ:INCY) applies perfectly to this mantra.

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