Our extensive research has shown that imitating the smart money can generate significant returns for retail investors, which is why we track nearly 900 active prominent money managers and analyze their quarterly 13F filings. The stocks that are heavily bought by hedge funds historically outperformed the market, though there is no shortage of high profile failures like hedge funds’ 2018 losses in Facebook and Apple. Let’s take a closer look at what the funds we track think about Trillium Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:TRIL) in this article.
Is TRIL a good stock to buy? Investors who are in the know were in a bearish mood. The number of bullish hedge fund positions were cut by 3 in recent months. Trillium Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:TRIL) was in 24 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistic is 36. Our calculations also showed that TRIL isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings). There were 27 hedge funds in our database with TRIL positions at the end of the first quarter.
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Do Hedge Funds Think TRIL Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At second quarter’s end, a total of 24 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -11% from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in TRIL over the last 24 quarters. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
The largest stake in Trillium Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:TRIL) was held by Avoro Capital Advisors (venBio Select Advisor), which reported holding $55.3 million worth of stock at the end of June. It was followed by RA Capital Management with a $51.3 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Citadel Investment Group, OrbiMed Advisors, and Frazier Healthcare Partners. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Ghost Tree Capital allocated the biggest weight to Trillium Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:TRIL), around 3.33% of its 13F portfolio. Frazier Healthcare Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 2.79 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to TRIL.
Seeing as Trillium Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:TRIL) has faced falling interest from the aggregate hedge fund industry, it’s easy to see that there was a specific group of hedgies that decided to sell off their entire stakes last quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Egen Atkinson and Michael Kramarz’s Commodore Capital said goodbye to the largest position of the “upper crust” of funds followed by Insider Monkey, valued at close to $8.5 million in stock. Doron Breen and Mori Arkin’s fund, Sphera Global Healthcare Fund, also cut its stock, about $7.2 million worth. These transactions are interesting, as total hedge fund interest fell by 3 funds last quarter.
Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Trillium Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:TRIL) but similarly valued. These stocks are Associated Capital Group, Inc. (NYSE:AC), U.S. Silica Holdings Inc (NYSE:SLCA), Sutro Biopharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:STRO), Modine Manufacturing Company (NYSE:MOD), Liquidity Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:LQDT), Tucows Inc. (NASDAQ:TCX), and Organigram Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:OGI). All of these stocks’ market caps are similar to TRIL’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| AC | 4 | 53935 | 0 |
| SLCA | 17 | 112370 | -1 |
| STRO | 26 | 223156 | -2 |
| MOD | 18 | 149855 | 1 |
| LQDT | 8 | 88768 | 0 |
| TCX | 8 | 117520 | 1 |
| OGI | 6 | 5958 | -3 |
| Average | 12.4 | 107366 | -0.6 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 12.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $107 million. That figure was $284 million in TRIL’s case. Sutro Biopharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:STRO) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Associated Capital Group, Inc. (NYSE:AC) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. Trillium Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:TRIL) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for TRIL is 67.5. 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. 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 24% in 2021 through October 22nd and still beat the market by 1.6 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on TRIL as the stock returned 84.6% since the end of Q2 (through 10/22) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.
Follow Trillium Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:TRIL)
Follow Trillium Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:TRIL)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
