Hedge Funds Are Piling Into NanoString Technologies Inc (NSTG)

Our extensive research has shown that imitating the smart money can generate significant returns for retail investors, which is why we track nearly 900 active prominent money managers and analyze their quarterly 13F filings. The stocks that are heavily bought by hedge funds historically outperformed the market, though there is no shortage of high profile failures like hedge funds’ 2018 losses in Facebook and Apple. Let’s take a closer look at what the funds we track think about NanoString Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:NSTG) in this article.

Is NanoString Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:NSTG) the right pick for your portfolio? Investors who are in the know were in a bullish mood. The number of long hedge fund bets rose by 1 in recent months. NanoString Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:NSTG) was in 26 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 26. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that NSTG isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings). There were 25 hedge funds in our database with NSTG holdings at the end of June.

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium prices have more than doubled over the past year, so we go through lists like the 10 best EV 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. Keeping this in mind let’s take a glance at the new hedge fund action regarding NanoString Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:NSTG).

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

At Q3’s end, a total of 26 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 4% from the second quarter of 2021. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in NSTG over the last 25 quarters. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an “upper tier” of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were adding to their holdings substantially (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in NanoString Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:NSTG) was held by Marshall Wace LLP, which reported holding $92.3 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by ARK Investment Management with a $75.2 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Pura Vida Investments, Polar Capital, and Armistice Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Pura Vida Investments allocated the biggest weight to NanoString Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:NSTG), around 1.93% of its 13F portfolio. Eversept Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.61 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to NSTG.

As industrywide interest jumped, some big names were breaking ground themselves. Eversept Partners, managed by Kamran Moghtaderi, assembled the most outsized position in NanoString Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:NSTG). Eversept Partners had $8.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital also made a $1.5 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new NSTG positions are Jinghua Yan’s TwinBeech Capital, Greg Eisner’s Engineers Gate Manager, and Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as NanoString Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:NSTG) but similarly valued. These stocks are Liberty Oilfield Services Inc. (NYSE:LBRT), Columbia Property Trust Inc (NYSE:CXP), Harmony Biosciences Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:HRMY), JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd. (NYSE:JKS), Ranpak Holdings Corp (NYSE:PACK), Archaea Energy Inc. (NYSE:LFG), and Everi Holdings Inc (NYSE:EVRI). All of these stocks’ market caps are similar to NSTG’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 18 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $308 million. That figure was $454 million in NSTG’s case. Everi Holdings Inc (NYSE:EVRI) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Liberty Oilfield Services Inc. (NYSE:LBRT) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. NanoString Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:NSTG) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for NSTG is 75.6. 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 positive signal but 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 31.1% in 2021 through December 9th and beat the market again by 5.1 percentage points. Unfortunately NSTG wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on NSTG were disappointed as the stock returned -18.5% since the end of September (through 12/9) 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 many of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

Suggested Articles:

• 25 Countries with the Most Debt Per Capita and Debt to GDP: 2020 Rankings
• 15 Biggest Mining Companies In The World
• 16 Best Investment Apps for Beginners

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