Is inTEST Corporation (INTT) A Good Stock To Buy?

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 inTEST Corporation (NYSE:INTT) based on those filings.

inTEST Corporation (NYSE:INTT) was in 5 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. INTT investors should pay attention to an increase in hedge fund interest lately. There were 4 hedge funds in our database with INTT positions at the end of the previous quarter. Our calculations also showed that INTT 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.

To the average investor there are plenty of indicators investors employ to appraise their holdings. Two of the less utilized indicators are hedge fund and insider trading moves. Our researchers have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the elite hedge fund managers can trounce the S&P 500 by a significant margin (see the details here).

Ken Griffin CITADEL INVESTMENT GROUP

Ken Griffin of Citadel Investment Group

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. With all of this in mind we’re going to go over the latest hedge fund action surrounding inTEST Corporation (NYSE:INTT).

What does smart money think about inTEST Corporation (NYSE:INTT)?

Heading into the second quarter of 2020, a total of 5 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 25% from the previous quarter. By comparison, 5 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in INTT a year ago. So, let’s check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

More specifically, Nokomis Capital was the largest shareholder of inTEST Corporation (NYSE:INTT), with a stake worth $2.4 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Nokomis Capital was Renaissance Technologies, which amassed a stake valued at $2.1 million. Juniper Investment Company, Arrowstreet Capital, and Citadel Investment Group 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 Juniper Investment Company allocated the biggest weight to inTEST Corporation (NYSE:INTT), around 1.62% of its 13F portfolio. Nokomis Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 1.17 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to INTT.

As one would reasonably expect, specific money managers have jumped into inTEST Corporation (NYSE:INTT) headfirst. Citadel Investment Group, managed by Ken Griffin, created the most valuable position in inTEST Corporation (NYSE:INTT). Citadel Investment Group had $0 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to inTEST Corporation (NYSE:INTT). These stocks are Tuesday Morning Corporation (NASDAQ:TUES), MV Oil Trust (NYSE:MVO), The New Home Company Inc. (NYSE:NWHM), and Immutep Limited (NASDAQ:IMMP). All of these stocks’ market caps resemble INTT’s market cap.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
TUES 4 1259 -3
MVO 1 160 0
NWHM 8 2899 1
IMMP 3 278 2
Average 4 1149 0

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1 million. That figure was $6 million in INTT’s case. The New Home Company Inc. (NYSE:NWHM) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand MV Oil Trust (NYSE:MVO) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. inTEST Corporation (NYSE:INTT) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above 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 but still beat the market by 13.2 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on INTT, though not to the same extent, as the stock returned 19.5% during the first two months of the second quarter and outperformed the market as well.

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