Credit Suisse Group AG (ADR) (CS): Hedge Fund and Insider Sentiment Unchanged, What Should You Do?

What’s a smart Credit Suisse Group AG (ADR) (NYSE:CS) investor to do?

At the moment, there are plenty of methods market participants can use to watch their holdings. A pair of the most innovative are hedge fund and insider trading interest. At Insider Monkey, our studies have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the top fund managers can trounce their index-focused peers by a superb amount (see just how much).

Just as necessary, optimistic insider trading activity is a second way to look at the investments you’re interested in. As the old adage goes: there are many motivations for an executive to get rid of shares of his or her company, but just one, very obvious reason why they would behave bullishly. Many empirical studies have demonstrated the useful potential of this strategy if investors know where to look (learn more here).

Keeping this in mind, it’s important to study the recent info surrounding Credit Suisse Group AG (ADR) (NYSE:CS).

What does the smart money think about Credit Suisse Group AG (ADR) (NYSE:CS)?

At Q2’s end, a total of 10 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of 0% from one quarter earlier. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings substantially.

Out of the hedge funds we follow, Bruce J. Richards and Louis Hanover’s Marathon Asset Management had the most valuable position in Credit Suisse Group AG (ADR) (NYSE:CS), worth close to $11.1 million, accounting for 1.8% of its total 13F portfolio. On Marathon Asset Management’s heels is David Dreman of Dreman Value Management, with a $5.8 million position; the fund has 0.2% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other hedge funds with similar optimism include Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management and Michael Messner’s Seminole Capital (Investment Mgmt).

Because Credit Suisse Group AG (ADR) (NYSE:CS) has witnessed bearish sentiment from the smart money’s best and brightest, it’s easy to see that there was a specific group of money managers that slashed their positions entirely last quarter. Intriguingly, Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson’s Adage Capital Management cut the biggest investment of the “upper crust” of funds we key on, worth close to $8.5 million in call options.. Steven Cohen’s fund, SAC Capital Advisors, also dumped its call options., about $3.3 million worth. These transactions are intriguing to say the least, as total hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).

What do corporate executives and insiders think about Credit Suisse Group AG (ADR) (NYSE:CS)?

Insider buying is most useful when the company in focus has seen transactions within the past six months. Over the last six-month time frame, Credit Suisse Group AG (ADR) (NYSE:CS) has experienced zero unique insiders purchasing, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

We’ll go over the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to Credit Suisse Group AG (ADR) (NYSE:CS). These stocks are Banco Santander, S.A. (ADR) (NYSE:SAN), UBS AG (USA) (NYSE:UBS), Barclays PLC (ADR) (NYSE:BCS), Lloyds Banking Group PLC (ADR) (NYSE:LYG), and Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc (ADR) (NYSE:RBS). This group of stocks are the members of the foreign money center banks industry and their market caps are similar to CS’s market cap.