Cinemark Holdings, Inc. (CNK): Insiders Aren’t Crazy About It But Hedge Funds Love It

Is Cinemark Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CNK) a good investment?

To many investors, hedge funds are viewed as useless, old financial vehicles of a forgotten age. Although there are more than 8,000 hedge funds trading today, Insider Monkey looks at the bigwigs of this group, about 525 funds. It is assumed that this group controls the lion’s share of the smart money’s total assets, and by paying attention to their highest quality equity investments, we’ve figured out a number of investment strategies that have historically beaten Mr. Market. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outstripped the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points per year 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 beaten the S&P 500 index by 33 percentage points in 11 months (explore the details and some picks here).

Equally as useful, optimistic insider trading sentiment is another way to look at the stock market universe. There are a number of stimuli for an executive to downsize shares of his or her company, but just one, very obvious reason why they would buy. Plenty of academic studies have demonstrated the market-beating potential of this tactic if shareholders know where to look (learn more here).

Now that that’s out of the way, it’s important to discuss the latest info about Cinemark Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CNK).

How are hedge funds trading Cinemark Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CNK)?

At Q2’s end, a total of 23 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of 5% from the previous quarter. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes significantly.

When using filings from the hedgies we track, Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies had the biggest position in Cinemark Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CNK), worth close to $98.5 million, accounting for 0.3% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is John Osterweis of Osterweis Capital Management, with a $92.1 million position; 3.4% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Some other hedge funds that hold long positions include Mark Broach’s Manatuck Hill Partners, Amy Minella’s Cardinal Capital and Greg Poole’s Echo Street Capital Management.

Now, certain bigger names have been driving this bullishness. Renaissance Technologies, managed by Jim Simons, assembled the biggest position in Cinemark Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CNK). Renaissance Technologies had 98.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. John Osterweis’s Osterweis Capital Management also initiated a $92.1 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new CNK positions are Mark Broach’s Manatuck Hill Partners, Amy Minella’s Cardinal Capital, and Greg Poole’s Echo Street Capital Management.

How are insiders trading Cinemark Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CNK)?

Insider buying made by high-level executives is most useful when the company we’re looking at has experienced transactions within the past 180 days. Over the latest 180-day time frame, Cinemark Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CNK) has experienced zero unique insiders buying, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

We’ll also examine the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to Cinemark Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CNK). These stocks are Carmike Cinemas, Inc. (NASDAQ:CKEC), RealD (NYSE:RLD), Dreamworks Animation Skg Inc (NASDAQ:DWA), Regal Entertainment Group (NYSE:RGC), and Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. (USA) (NYSE:LGF). This group of stocks are in the movie production, theaters industry and their market caps are similar to CNK’s market cap.

Using the results explained by the previously mentioned strategies, regular investors must always track hedge fund and insider trading activity, and Cinemark Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CNK) is an important part of this process.

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