Is Oblong Inc. (OBLG) A Good Stock To Buy?

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. Insider Monkey finished processing 866 13F filings submitted by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of March 31st, 2020. In this article we are going to take a look at smart money sentiment towards Oblong Inc. (NYSE:OBLG).

Is OBLG a good stock to buy? Oblong Inc. (NYSE:OBLG) was in 3 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic was previously 2. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. OBLG investors should pay attention to an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers lately. There were 1 hedge funds in our database with OBLG positions at the end of the fourth quarter. Our calculations also showed that OBLG 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. Hedge funds have more than $3.5 trillion in assets under management, so you can’t expect their entire portfolios to beat the market by large margins. Our research was able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 115 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). So you can still find a lot of gems by following hedge funds’ moves today.

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, an activist hedge fund wants to buy this $28 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. With all of this in mind let’s take a gander at the recent hedge fund action encompassing Oblong Inc. (NYSE:OBLG).

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

At Q1’s end, a total of 3 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 200% from the previous quarter. By comparison, 2 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in OBLG a year ago. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in Oblong Inc. (NYSE:OBLG) was held by Greenspring Associates, which reported holding $25.2 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Renaissance Technologies with a $0.1 million position. The only other hedge fund that is bullish on the company was Citadel Investment Group.

Consequently, key money managers have jumped into Oblong Inc. (NYSE:OBLG) headfirst. Greenspring Associates, managed by C. Ashton Newhall and James Lim, created the most valuable position in Oblong Inc. (NYSE:OBLG). Greenspring Associates had $25.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group also initiated a $0.1 million position during the quarter.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Oblong Inc. (NYSE:OBLG). These stocks are Nicholas Financial, Inc. (NASDAQ:NICK), CollPlant Biotechnologies Ltd. (NASDAQ:CLGN), Lipocine Inc (NASDAQ:LPCN), CF Bankshares Inc (NASDAQ:CFBK), Alpha Pro Tech, Ltd. (NYSE:APT), Zovio Inc. (NASDAQ:ZVO), and Natuzzi, S.p.A (NYSE:NTZ). This group of stocks’ market caps are similar to OBLG’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 3.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $10 million. That figure was $25 million in OBLG’s case. Zovio Inc. (NASDAQ:ZVO) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand CollPlant Biotechnologies Ltd. (NASDAQ:CLGN) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Oblong Inc. (NYSE:OBLG) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for OBLG is 49.5. 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 OBLG wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); OBLG investors were disappointed as the stock returned -24.3% 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.

Follow Insider Monkey on Twitter