Is TRIL A Good Stock To Buy According To Hedge Funds?

Many prominent investors, including Warren Buffett, David Tepper and Stan Druckenmiller, have been cautious regarding the current bull market and missed out as the stock market reached another high in recent weeks. On the other hand, technology hedge funds weren’t timid and registered double digit market beating gains. Financials, energy and industrial stocks aren’t doing great but many of the stocks that delivered strong returns since March are still going very strong and hedge funds actually increased their positions in these stocks. In this article we will find out how hedge fund sentiment to Trillium Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:TRIL) changed recently.

Is TRIL a good stock to buy? Trillium Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:TRIL) shareholders have witnessed an increase in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds lately. Trillium Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:TRIL) was in 32 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 25. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that TRIL isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 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.

In today’s marketplace there are a large number of tools investors put to use to evaluate their stock investments. A duo of the best tools are hedge fund and insider trading activity. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the best hedge fund managers can trounce the market by a healthy margin (see the details here).

At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, the House passed a landmark bill decriminalizing marijuana. So, we are checking out this under the radar cannabis stock right now. We go through lists like the 15 best blue chip stocks to buy to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. 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 website. Now we’re going to analyze the recent hedge fund action surrounding Trillium Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:TRIL).

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

At Q3’s end, a total of 32 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 28% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 4 hedge funds with a bullish position in TRIL a year ago. So, let’s examine which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

More specifically, RA Capital Management was the largest shareholder of Trillium Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:TRIL), with a stake worth $87.6 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing RA Capital Management was Avoro Capital Advisors (venBio Select Advisor), which amassed a stake valued at $78.2 million. Citadel Investment Group, Frazier Healthcare Partners, and Cormorant Asset Management 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 Ghost Tree Capital allocated the biggest weight to Trillium Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:TRIL), around 8.01% of its 13F portfolio. Frazier Healthcare Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 3.55 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to TRIL.

As one would reasonably expect, key money managers were breaking ground themselves. Cormorant Asset Management, managed by Bihua Chen, initiated the biggest position in Trillium Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:TRIL). Cormorant Asset Management had $35.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Richard Driehaus’s Driehaus Capital also initiated a $12.8 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new TRIL investors: Manfred Yu’s Acuta Capital Partners, Benjamin A. Smith’s Laurion Capital Management, and Matthew L Pinz’s Pinz Capital.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Trillium Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:TRIL) but similarly valued. These stocks are First Merchants Corporation (NASDAQ:FRME), Alexander’s, Inc. (NYSE:ALX), Seabridge Gold, Inc. (NYSE:SA), CBIZ, Inc. (NYSE:CBZ), ACM Research, Inc. (NASDAQ:ACMR), Columbia Property Trust Inc (NYSE:CXP), and Xperi Holding Corporation (NASDAQ:XPER). This group of stocks’ market caps match TRIL’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 14.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $99 million. That figure was $465 million in TRIL’s case. Xperi Holding Corporation (NASDAQ:XPER) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Alexander’s, Inc. (NYSE:ALX) is the least popular one with only 10 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Trillium Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:TRIL) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for TRIL is 90. 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 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.3% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10 percentage points. These stocks gained 33.3% in 2020 through December 18th and still beat the market by 16.4 percentage points. Unfortunately TRIL wasn’t nearly as popular as these 20 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on TRIL were disappointed as the stock returned -12% since the end of the third quarter (through 12/18) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market in 2020.

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