Is China Natural Resources (CHNR) A Good Stock To Buy?

Is China Natural Resources, Inc. (NASDAQ:CHNR) 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 CHNR a good stock to buy? Hedge fund interest in China Natural Resources, Inc. (NASDAQ:CHNR) shares was flat at the end of last quarter. This is usually a negative indicator. Our calculations also showed that CHNR isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings). At the end of this article we will also compare CHNR to other stocks including AmeriServ Financial, Inc. (NASDAQ:ASRV), Kiromic BioPharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:KRBP), and Air T, Inc. (NASDAQ:AIRT) to get a better sense of its popularity.

In the 21st century investor’s toolkit there are several gauges investors put to use to grade their stock investments. A pair of the best gauges are hedge fund and insider trading activity. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the elite fund managers can trounce the broader indices by a significant margin (see the details here). 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 $30 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. Now we’re going to take a peek at the key hedge fund action encompassing China Natural Resources, Inc. (NASDAQ:CHNR).

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

At Q1’s end, a total of 3 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 0% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 0 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in CHNR a year ago. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists a few noteworthy hedge fund managers who were adding to their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in China Natural Resources, Inc. (NASDAQ:CHNR) was held by Renaissance Technologies, which reported holding $0.5 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Two Sigma Advisors with a $0.1 million position. The only other hedge fund that is bullish on the company was Citadel Investment Group.

Earlier we told you that the aggregate hedge fund interest in the stock was unchanged and we view this as a negative development. Even though there weren’t any hedge funds dumping their holdings during the third quarter, there weren’t any hedge funds initiating brand new positions. This indicates that hedge funds, at the very best, perceive this stock as dead money and they haven’t identified any viable catalysts that can attract investor attention.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as China Natural Resources, Inc. (NASDAQ:CHNR) but similarly valued. We will take a look at AmeriServ Financial, Inc. (NASDAQ:ASRV), Kiromic BioPharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:KRBP), Air T, Inc. (NASDAQ:AIRT), Organovo Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:ONVO), Greenlane Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:GNLN), urban-gro, Inc. (NASDAQ:UGRO), and ClearOne Inc (NASDAQ:CLRO). This group of stocks’ market values are closest to CHNR’s market value.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $4 million. That figure was $1 million in CHNR’s case. Greenlane Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:GNLN) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Kiromic BioPharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:KRBP) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. China Natural Resources, Inc. (NASDAQ:CHNR) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CHNR is 47.5. 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 CHNR wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); CHNR investors were disappointed as the stock returned -14.8% 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.