Diana Shipping Inc. (DSX): Insiders Aren’t Crazy About It

Is Diana Shipping Inc. (NYSE:DSX) undervalued? The smart money is becoming hopeful. The number of bullish hedge fund positions advanced by 2 recently.

According to most market participants, hedge funds are seen as worthless, old financial tools of yesteryear. While there are greater than 8000 funds trading at the moment, we at Insider Monkey look at the upper echelon of this group, about 450 funds. It is estimated that this group oversees the majority of all hedge funds’ total capital, and by monitoring their top stock picks, we have uncovered a number of investment strategies that have historically outperformed the market. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outpaced 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 outpaced the S&P 500 index by 23.3 percentage points in 8 months (explore the details and some picks here).

Equally as key, bullish insider trading activity is a second way to break down the financial markets. As the old adage goes: there are a number of stimuli for an insider to drop shares of his or her company, but just one, very clear reason why they would behave bullishly. Various empirical studies have demonstrated the useful potential of this strategy if investors understand what to do (learn more here).

With all of this in mind, we’re going to take a gander at the latest action surrounding Diana Shipping Inc. (NYSE:DSX).

Hedge fund activity in Diana Shipping Inc. (NYSE:DSX)

At Q1’s end, a total of 11 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of 22% from the first quarter. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings substantially.

According to our comprehensive database, Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies had the biggest position in Diana Shipping Inc. (NYSE:DSX), worth close to $16.5 million, accounting for less than 0.1%% of its total 13F portfolio. On Renaissance Technologies’s heels is Thomas E. Claugus of GMT Capital, with a $12.3 million position; the fund has 0.3% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other hedge funds that hold long positions include Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates, Van Schreiber’s Bennett Lawrence Management and John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors.

Now, specific money managers were breaking ground themselves. GMT Capital, managed by Thomas E. Claugus, established the most outsized position in Diana Shipping Inc. (NYSE:DSX). GMT Capital had 12.3 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Arvind Sanger’s GeoSphere Capital Management also initiated a $1.2 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new DSX investors: Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management, John Fichthorn’s Dialectic Capital Management, and Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management.

What do corporate executives and insiders think about Diana Shipping Inc. (NYSE:DSX)?

Insider trading activity, especially when it’s bullish, is most useful when the primary stock in question has experienced transactions within the past 180 days. Over the last 180-day time frame, Diana Shipping Inc. (NYSE:DSX) has seen zero unique insiders buying, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

Let’s go over hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to Diana Shipping Inc. (NYSE:DSX). These stocks are Capital Product Partners L.P. (NASDAQ:CPLP), Alexander & Baldwin Holdings Inc (NYSE:MATX), GasLog Ltd (NYSE:GLOG), DryShips Inc. (NASDAQ:DRYS), and Navios Maritime Partners L.P. (NYSE:NMM). All of these stocks are in the shipping industry and their market caps are closest to DSX’s market cap.