Hedge Funds Are Selling TG Therapeutics Inc (TGTX)

In this article we will take a look at whether hedge funds think TG Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:TGTX) is a good investment right now. We check hedge fund and billionaire investor sentiment before delving into hours of research. Hedge funds spend millions of dollars on Ivy League graduates, unconventional data sources, expert networks, and get tips from investment bankers and industry insiders. Sure they sometimes fail miserably, but their consensus stock picks historically outperformed the market after adjusting for known risk factors.

Is TG Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:TGTX) the right pick for your portfolio? Investors who are in the know were cutting their exposure. The number of long hedge fund bets went down by 11 lately. TG Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:TGTX) was in 27 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 38. Our calculations also showed that TGTX isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

Hedge funds’ reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn’t keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Our research has shown that hedge funds’ small-cap stock picks managed to beat the market by double digits annually between 1999 and 2016, but the margin of outperformance has been declining in recent years. Nevertheless, we were still able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by 115 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that underperformed the market by 10 percentage points annually between 2006 and 2017. Interestingly the margin of underperformance of these stocks has been increasing in recent years. Investors who are long the market and short these stocks would have returned more than 27% annually between 2015 and 2017. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 in our quarterly newsletter.

Lee Ainslie's Top 10 Stock Picks

Lee Ainslie of Maverick Capital

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, economists warn of inflation flare up. So, we are checking out this backdoor gold play that has hit peak gains of 718% in a little over a year. 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. Keeping this in mind let’s check out the recent hedge fund action regarding TG Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:TGTX).

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

At the end of March, a total of 27 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -29% from the fourth quarter of 2020. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards TGTX over the last 23 quarters. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings substantially (or already accumulated large positions).

Is TGTX A Good Stock To Buy?

More specifically, RA Capital Management was the largest shareholder of TG Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:TGTX), with a stake worth $223.5 million reported as of the end of March. Trailing RA Capital Management was Alkeon Capital Management, which amassed a stake valued at $197.2 million. Maverick Capital, Woodline Partners, and Eversept Partners were 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 Copernicus Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to TG Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:TGTX), around 5.45% of its 13F portfolio. Lion Point is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 5.34 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to TGTX.

Seeing as TG Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:TGTX) has experienced a decline in interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s safe to say that there were a few money managers who sold off their full holdings heading into Q2. Interestingly, Arsani William’s Logos Capital sold off the largest investment of the 750 funds tracked by Insider Monkey, valued at an estimated $44.2 million in stock, and James A. Silverman’s Opaleye Management was right behind this move, as the fund dumped about $20.2 million worth. These transactions are important to note, as total hedge fund interest dropped by 11 funds heading into Q2.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as TG Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:TGTX) but similarly valued. These stocks are Apache Corporation (NYSE:APA), Pinnacle Financial Partners (NASDAQ:PNFP), Change Healthcare Inc. (NASDAQ:CHNG), Stifel Financial Corp. (NYSE:SF), Planet Fitness Inc (NYSE:PLNT), Texas Roadhouse Inc (NASDAQ:TXRH), and C3.ai, Inc. (NYSE:AI). This group of stocks’ market values resemble TGTX’s market value.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
APA 42 497934 7
PNFP 14 70443 1
CHNG 56 1845472 11
SF 15 190899 -3
PLNT 40 1181093 -7
TXRH 22 383312 -6
AI 27 222209 -10
Average 30.9 627337 -1

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 30.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $627 million. That figure was $860 million in TGTX’s case. Change Healthcare Inc. (NASDAQ:CHNG) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Pinnacle Financial Partners (NASDAQ:PNFP) is the least popular one with only 14 bullish hedge fund positions. TG Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:TGTX) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for TGTX is 30.8. 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 24% in 2021 through July 9th and surpassed the market again by 6.7 percentage points. Unfortunately TGTX wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); TGTX investors were disappointed as the stock returned -16.3% since the end of March (through 7/9) 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 most of these stocks already outperformed the market in 2021.

Follow Tg Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:TGTX)

Suggested Articles:

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