Is Data I / O Corporation (DAIO) a good stock to buy?
Financial regulations require hedge funds and high net worth investors who have crossed the $ 100 million threshold to file a report showing their positions at the end of each quarter. While not the intention, these deposits level the playing field to some extent for ordinary investors. The latest round of 13F deposits revealed the funds positions on March 31. At Insider Monkey, weve created an extensive database of over 866 of these established hedge funds and famous value investor records. In this article, we take a look at how these elite funds and top investors traded Data I / O Corporation (NASDAQ:DAIO) on the basis of these deposits. The best stock pickers were in a bearish mood. The number of long bets on hedge funds has fallen by 1 in recent months. Data I / O Corporation (NASDAQ:DAIO) appeared in the portfolios of 3 hedge funds at the end of March. The record for this statistic is 7. Our calculations also showed that DAIO is not among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 ranking). There were 4 hedge funds in our database with DAIO positions at the end of the fourth quarter. Our research has shown that a select group of hedge funds have outperformed S&P 500 ETFs by 115 percentage points since March 2017 (see details here). This is why we believe that hedge fund sentiment is an extremely useful indicator that investors should pay attention to. Xiniya XNY 2014 Q3 earnings call transcript  New York Stock Exchange  At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next big investing idea. For example, an activist hedge fund wants to buy this biotech share at $ 26 for $ 50. We therefore recommended a long position to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 10 best stocks of batteries to choose the next Tesla which will offer a 10x return. Even though we only recommend positions in a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check as many stocks as possible. We read letters from hedge fund investors and listen to market arguments at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter at our home page. With that in mind, lets take a look at the key hedge fund stock encompassing Data I / O Corporation (NASDAQ:DAIO). At the end of the first quarter, a total of 3 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long in this stock, a change of -25% from the previous quarter. Below you can see how hedge fund sentiment towards DAIO has evolved over the past 23 quarters. So lets take a look at which hedge funds were among the top stock holders and which hedge funds were making big moves. Specifically, Renaissance Technologies was the largest shareholder in Data I / O Corporation (NASDAQ: DAIO), with a stake worth $ 3.5 million reported in late March. Lagging behind Renaissance Technologies was AIGH Investment Partners, which raised a stake valued at $ 2.1 million. Greenhaven Road Investment Management was also very fond of the stock, becoming one of the firms largest hedge fund holders. In terms of portfolio weights assigned to each position AIGH investment partners assigned the largest weighting to Data I / O Corporation (NASDAQ: DAIO), around 0.43% of its 13F portfolio. Greenhaven Road Investment Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 0.02% of its 13F equity portfolio to DAIO. We consider the hedge fund activity on the security to be unfavorable, but in this case there was only one hedge fund that sold its entire position: Selected equity group. A hedge fund that sells its entire position does not always imply a bearish intention. Theoretically, a hedge fund can decide to sell a promising position in order to invest the proceeds in a more promising idea. However, we dont think thats the case in this case, as none of the more than 750 hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey identified DAIO as a viable investment and initiated a position in the stock. Now lets take a look at the activity of hedge funds in other stocks similar to Data I / O Corporation (NASDAQ: DAIO). These stocks are Soligenix, Inc. (NASDAQ:SNGX), Acorda Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:ACOR), TAT Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ:TAKEN), The Dixie Group Inc (NASDAQ:DXYN), Indonesia Energy Corporation Limited (NYSE:INDO), China Hgs Real Estate Inc (NASDAQ:HGSH) and Income Opportunity Realty Investors, Inc. (NYSE:IOR). The market caps of this group of stocks are similar to the market cap of DAIO. [table] Ticker, number of HF with positions, total value of HF positions (x1000), change of HF position SNGX, 1,130.0 ACOR, 4.9435.1 TATT, 1.1283.0 DXYN, 4.7394.0 INDO, 2.481 , 2 HGSH, 2,117.1 IOR, 1,287.0 Medium, 2.1.2732.0.6 [/table]  See the table here if you have formatting problems. As you can see, these stocks had an average of 2.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $ 3 million. That figure was $ 6 million in the case of DAIO. Acorda Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:ACOR) is the most popular action in this table. On the other hand, Soligenix, Inc. (NASDAQ:SNGX) is the least popular with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Data I / O Corporation (NASDAQ: DAIO) isnt the most popular stock in this group, but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for DAIO is 50.2. Stocks with a 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 have shown 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 11 and have consistently beat the market by 3.3 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right to bet on DAIO, as the stock has returned 22.9% since the end of the first quarter (through 6/11) and has outperformed the market. Hedge funds have been rewarded for their relative optimism. Receive real-time email alerts: Follow Data I / o Corp (NASDAQ: DAIO)  Disclosure: none. This article originally appeared on Monkey initiate. Related content