Atlantic Tele-Network, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATNI): Hedge Funds Are Bullish and Insiders Are Bearish, What Should You Do? – Shenandoah Telecommunications Company (NASDAQ:SHEN), Cincinnati Bell Inc. (NYSE:CBB)

Is Atlantic Tele-Network, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATNI) a cheap investment today? The best stock pickers are turning bullish. The number of bullish hedge fund positions improved by 5 recently.

In the eyes of most investors, hedge funds are perceived as unimportant, outdated financial tools of years past. While there are more than 8000 funds with their doors open today, we at Insider Monkey hone in on the upper echelon of this club, around 450 funds. Most estimates calculate that this group has its hands on the lion’s share of the smart money’s total asset base, and by paying attention to their highest performing investments, we have unearthed a few investment strategies that have historically outpaced the broader indices. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outperformed the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points per annum for a decade in our back tests, and since we’ve began to sharing our picks with our subscribers at the end of August 2012, we have outclassed the S&P 500 index by 24 percentage points in 7 months (see all of our picks from August).

Just as important, bullish insider trading activity is another way to parse down the investments you’re interested in. Just as you’d expect, there are lots of motivations for an executive to sell shares of his or her company, but just one, very clear reason why they would behave bullishly. Many empirical studies have demonstrated the market-beating potential of this method if investors know what to do (learn more here).

Consequently, we’re going to take a look at the recent action encompassing Atlantic Tele-Network, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATNI).

Hedge fund activity in Atlantic Tele-Network, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATNI)

In preparation for this year, a total of 10 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of 100% from one quarter earlier. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes meaningfully.

According to our comprehensive database, Royce & Associates, managed by Chuck Royce, holds the largest position in Atlantic Tele-Network, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATNI). Royce & Associates has a $23 million position in the stock, comprising 0.1% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Millennium Management, managed by Israel Englander, which held a $3 million position; 0% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Other hedge funds that are bullish include Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies, D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group.

Consequently, key hedge funds were leading the bulls’ herd. Whitebox Advisors, managed by Andy Redleaf, created the most valuable position in Atlantic Tele-Network, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATNI). Whitebox Advisors had 1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Joel Greenblatt’s Gotham Asset Management also initiated a $0 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new ATNI positions are Steven Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors, Neil Chriss’s Hutchin Hill Capital, and Mike Vranos’s Ellington.

How have insiders been trading Atlantic Tele-Network, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATNI)?

Bullish insider trading is particularly usable when the primary stock in question has seen transactions within the past 180 days. Over the last six-month time period, Atlantic Tele-Network, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATNI) has seen zero unique insiders buying, and 1 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

Let’s also review hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to Atlantic Tele-Network, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATNI). These stocks are magicJack VocalTec Ltd (NASDAQ:CALL), Shenandoah Telecommunications Company (NASDAQ:SHEN), EarthLink, Inc. (NASDAQ:ELNK), Cincinnati Bell Inc. (NYSE:CBB), and Consolidated Communications Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:CNSL). This group of stocks belong to the telecom services – domestic industry and their market caps are similar to ATNI’s market cap.

With the returns exhibited by Insider Monkey’s time-tested strategies, everyday investors must always keep an eye on hedge fund and insider trading sentiment, and Atlantic Tele-Network, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATNI) is an important part of this process.

Click here to learn why you should track hedge funds