Consolidated Edison, Inc. (ED): Hedge Funds Are Bullish and Insiders Are Undecided, What Should You Do?

Is Consolidated Edison, Inc. (NYSE:ED) a good investment?

In today’s marketplace, there are many indicators shareholders can use to analyze their holdings. A couple of the best are hedge fund and insider trading interest. At Insider Monkey, our studies have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the elite money managers can outpace their index-focused peers by a healthy amount (see just how much).

Just as crucial, positive insider trading sentiment is a second way to analyze the marketplace. As the old adage goes: there are plenty of motivations for a corporate insider to drop shares of his or her company, but only one, very obvious reason why they would buy. Plenty of empirical studies have demonstrated the useful potential of this tactic if shareholders understand what to do (learn more here).

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s examine the latest info about Consolidated Edison, Inc. (NYSE:ED).

What have hedge funds been doing with Consolidated Edison, Inc. (NYSE:ED)?

At Q2’s end, a total of 14 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of 27% from one quarter earlier. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes significantly.

Out of the hedge funds we follow, Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson’s Adage Capital Management had the largest position in Consolidated Edison, Inc. (NYSE:ED), worth close to $100.8 million, comprising 0.3% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Winton Capital Management, managed by David Harding, which held a $28.5 million position; the fund has 0.3% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining hedge funds that are bullish include Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management, Millennium Management Subsidiary’s Decade Capital Management and D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw.

With a general bullishness amongst the titans, certain money managers were breaking ground themselves. Adage Capital Management, managed by Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson, initiated the most valuable position in Consolidated Edison, Inc. (NYSE:ED). Adage Capital Management had 100.8 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. David Harding’s Winton Capital Management also initiated a $28.5 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management, Millennium Management Subsidiary’s Decade Capital Management, and D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw.

Insider trading activity in Consolidated Edison, Inc. (NYSE:ED)

Bullish insider trading is most useful when the company we’re looking at has seen transactions within the past half-year. Over the latest half-year time frame, Consolidated Edison, Inc. (NYSE:ED) has experienced zero unique insiders buying, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

We’ll check out the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to Consolidated Edison, Inc. (NYSE:ED). These stocks are PG&E Corporation (NYSE:PCG), Edison International (NYSE:EIX), Korea Electric Power Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:KEP), PPL Corporation (NYSE:PPL), and FirstEnergy Corp. (NYSE:FE). This group of stocks are the members of the electric utilities industry and their market caps match ED’s market cap.