Hedge Funds Are Nibbling On Clearsign Technologies Corp (CLIR)

Is Clearsign Technologies Corp (NASDAQ:CLIR) a good place to invest some of your money right now? We can gain invaluable insight to help us answer that question by studying the investment trends of top investors, who employ world-class Ivy League graduates, who are given immense resources and industry contacts to put their financial expertise to work. The top picks of these firms have historically outperformed the market when we account for known risk factors, making them very valuable investment ideas.

Is Clearsign Technologies Corp (NASDAQ:CLIR) ready to rally soon? The best stock pickers were in an optimistic mood. The number of bullish hedge fund bets improved by 2 recently. Clearsign Technologies Corp (NASDAQ:CLIR) was in 3 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 2. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that CLIR isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

If you’d ask most stock holders, hedge funds are assumed to be unimportant, outdated investment vehicles of yesteryear. While there are over 8000 funds with their doors open today, Our researchers hone in on the upper echelon of this group, about 850 funds. These investment experts control the majority of all hedge funds’ total asset base, and by keeping track of their highest performing equity investments, Insider Monkey has figured out several investment strategies that have historically exceeded the broader indices. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy outpaced the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points per year since its inception in March 2017. 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 .

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, an activist hedge fund wants to buy this $26 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. With all of this in mind let’s take a look at the fresh hedge fund action regarding Clearsign Technologies Corp (NASDAQ:CLIR).

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

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 3 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 200% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 0 hedge funds with a bullish position in CLIR a year ago. So, let’s check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Among these funds, Levin Capital Strategies held the most valuable stake in Clearsign Technologies Corp (NASDAQ:CLIR), which was worth $1.1 million at the end of the fourth quarter. On the second spot was Citadel Investment Group which amassed $0.3 million worth of shares. Southport Management was 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 Southport Management allocated the biggest weight to Clearsign Technologies Corp (NASDAQ:CLIR), around 1.05% of its 13F portfolio. Levin Capital Strategies is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.12 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CLIR.

Consequently, key hedge funds have jumped into Clearsign Technologies Corp (NASDAQ:CLIR) headfirst. Levin Capital Strategies, managed by John A. Levin, assembled the largest position in Clearsign Technologies Corp (NASDAQ:CLIR). Levin Capital Strategies had $1.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Jonathan Dawson’s Southport Management also initiated a $0.3 million position during the quarter. The only other fund with a new position in the stock is Renaissance Technologies.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Clearsign Technologies Corp (NASDAQ:CLIR). These stocks are SMTC Corporation (NASDAQ:SMTX), VivoPower International PLC (NASDAQ:VVPR), NeuBase Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:NBSE), Tarena International Inc (NASDAQ:TEDU), CooTek (Cayman) Inc. (NYSE:CTK), Penns Woods Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:PWOD), and Fusion Fuel Green PLC (NASDAQ:HTOO). This group of stocks’ market caps match CLIR’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 5.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $11 million. That figure was $2 million in CLIR’s case. NeuBase Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:NBSE) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Penns Woods Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:PWOD) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Clearsign Technologies Corp (NASDAQ:CLIR) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CLIR is 47. 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 CLIR wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); CLIR investors were disappointed as the stock returned -7.2% 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.

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