Is ALNY Stock A Buy or Sell?

In this article we will take a look at whether hedge funds think Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALNY) 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 ALNY stock a buy or sell? Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALNY) investors should be aware of an increase in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds lately. Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALNY) was in 39 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistic is 38. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. There were 35 hedge funds in our database with ALNY positions at the end of the third quarter. Our calculations also showed that ALNY isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q4 rankings).

Today there are tons of formulas stock market investors put to use to value publicly traded companies. Two of the best formulas are hedge fund and insider trading indicators. Our researchers have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the best money managers can beat their index-focused peers by a healthy amount (see the details here).

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

At the end of the fourth quarter, a total of 39 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 11% from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in ALNY over the last 22 quarters. So, let’s check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

The largest stake in Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALNY) was held by Maverick Capital, which reported holding $128 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Casdin Capital with a $101.4 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included 12 West Capital Management, Alkeon Capital Management, and Point72 Asset Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position 12 West Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALNY), around 4.1% of its 13F portfolio. Copernicus Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 4.05 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ALNY.

As aggregate interest increased, key hedge funds were breaking ground themselves. Point72 Asset Management, managed by Steve Cohen, assembled the most valuable position in Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALNY). Point72 Asset Management had $62.6 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Jerome Pfund and Michael Sjostrom’s Sectoral Asset Management also initiated a $14.1 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new ALNY positions are Richard Schimel and Lawrence Sapanski’s Cinctive Capital Management, Raffi Tokatlian’s Ararat Capital, and Sander Gerber’s Hudson Bay Capital Management.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALNY). We will take a look at Suzano S.A. (NYSE:SUZ), IDEX Corporation (NYSE:IEX), Extra Space Storage, Inc. (NYSE:EXR), Leidos Holdings Inc (NYSE:LDOS), Pool Corporation (NASDAQ:POOL), Telefonica Brasil SA (NYSE:VIV), and FMC Corporation (NYSE:FMC). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to ALNY’s market value.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 23.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $389 million. That figure was $757 million in ALNY’s case. FMC Corporation (NYSE:FMC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Suzano S.A. (NYSE:SUZ) is the least popular one with only 6 bullish hedge fund positions. Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALNY) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ALNY is 81.3. 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. Our calculations showed that top 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 81.2% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 26 percentage points. These stocks gained 5.3% in 2021 through March 19th and still beat the market by 0.8 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on ALNY as the stock returned 10.9% since the end of Q4 (through 3/19) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.

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

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