Here is What Hedge Funds Think About Great Panther Mining Ltd (GPL)

The financial regulations require hedge funds and wealthy investors that exceeded the $100 million equity holdings threshold to file a report that shows their positions at the end of every quarter. Even though it isn’t the intention, these filings to a certain extent level the playing field for ordinary investors. The latest round of 13F filings disclosed the funds’ positions on March 31st, about a week after the S&P 500 Index bottomed. We at Insider Monkey have made an extensive database of more than 821 of those established hedge funds and famous value investors’ filings. In this article, we analyze how these elite funds and prominent investors traded Great Panther Mining Ltd (NYSE:GPL) based on those filings.

Is Great Panther Mining Ltd (NYSE:GPL) the right pick for your portfolio? Hedge funds are taking a bullish view. The number of bullish hedge fund bets advanced by 1 recently. Our calculations also showed that GPL isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks).

Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

If you’d ask most investors, hedge funds are seen as worthless, old financial vehicles of the past. While there are more than 8000 funds trading today, Our researchers look at the top tier of this club, around 850 funds. These hedge fund managers orchestrate the lion’s share of the hedge fund industry’s total asset base, and by keeping an eye on their inimitable stock picks, Insider Monkey has uncovered many investment strategies that have historically beaten the market. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy defeated the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points annually since its inception in March 2017. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 36% since February 2017 (through May 18th) even though the market was up 30% during the same period. We just shared a list of 8 short targets in our latest quarterly update .

At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, 2020’s unprecedented market conditions provide us with the highest number of trading opportunities in a decade. So we are checking out stocks recommended/scorned by legendary Bill Miller. We interview hedge fund managers and ask them about their best ideas. If you want to find out the best healthcare stock to buy right now, you can watch our latest hedge fund manager interview here. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. Our best call in 2020 was shorting the market when the S&P 500 was trading at 3150 after realizing the coronavirus pandemic’s significance before most investors. Now we’re going to view the fresh hedge fund action surrounding Great Panther Mining Ltd (NYSE:GPL).

What have hedge funds been doing with Great Panther Mining Ltd (NYSE:GPL)?

At Q1’s end, a total of 5 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 25% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards GPL over the last 18 quarters. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in Great Panther Mining Ltd (NYSE:GPL) was held by Renaissance Technologies, which reported holding $1.1 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Sprott Asset Management with a $0.7 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Two Sigma Advisors, Citadel Investment Group, and Millennium Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Sprott Asset Management allocated the biggest weight to Great Panther Mining Ltd (NYSE:GPL), around 0.06% of its 13F portfolio. Renaissance Technologies is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.001 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to GPL.

As one would reasonably expect, key hedge funds have been driving this bullishness. Millennium Management, managed by Israel Englander, created the largest position in Great Panther Mining Ltd (NYSE:GPL). Millennium Management had $0 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Great Panther Mining Ltd (NYSE:GPL) but similarly valued. These stocks are Roadrunner Transportation Systems Inc (NYSE:RRTS), CRH Medical Corporation (NYSE:CRHM), Fonar Corporation (NASDAQ:FONR), and Erytech Pharma S.A. (NASDAQ:ERYP). All of these stocks’ market caps resemble GPL’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 5.5 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $29 million. That figure was $2 million in GPL’s case. Fonar Corporation (NASDAQ:FONR) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Erytech Pharma S.A. (NASDAQ:ERYP) is the least popular one with only 2 bullish hedge fund positions. Great Panther Mining Ltd (NYSE:GPL) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our calculations showed that top 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.4% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10.1 percentage points. These stocks gained 8.3% in 2020 through the end of May and still beat the market by 13.2 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on GPL as the stock returned 38.7% during the second quarter and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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