Is Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK) a buy?
In today’s marketplace, there are plenty of metrics market participants can use to watch stocks. Two of the most underrated are hedge fund and insider trading movement. At Insider Monkey, our research analyses have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the top money managers can outperform the market by a solid amount (see just how much).
Equally as key, positive insider trading activity is another way to analyze the investments you’re interested in. Obviously, there are a number of incentives for an upper level exec to drop shares of his or her company, but just one, very obvious reason why they would buy. Many academic studies have demonstrated the valuable potential of this tactic if investors understand what to do (learn more here).
Now that that’s out of the way, we’re going to analyze the recent info for Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK).
Hedge fund activity in Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK)
In preparation for the third quarter, a total of 28 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of -3% from the previous quarter. With hedgies’ capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of notable hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings significantly.
According to our 13F database, D E Shaw, managed by D. E. Shaw, holds the most valuable position in Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK). D E Shaw has a $143.4 million position in the stock, comprising 0.3% of its 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Michael Karsch of Karsch Capital Management, with a $56.2 million position; 4.8% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Remaining hedge funds with similar optimism include Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, Glenn J. Krevlin’s Glenhill Advisors and Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies.
Due to the fact Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK) has witnessed declining interest from upper-tier hedge fund managers, we can see that there is a sect of hedge funds that elected to cut their positions entirely last quarter. Intriguingly, Dinakar Singh’s TPG-AXON Management LP dumped the largest stake of the “upper crust” of funds we track, comprising an estimated $92.4 million in stock. Christopher Lord’s fund, Criterion Capital, also dumped its stock, about $48.4 million worth. These bearish behaviors are intriguing to say the least, as total hedge fund interest was cut by 1 funds last quarter.
Insider trading activity in Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK)
Insider buying made by high-level executives is at its handiest when the primary stock in question has seen transactions within the past six months. Over the last half-year time period, Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK) has seen zero unique insiders buying, and 7 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 Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK). These stocks are Infosys Ltd ADR (NYSE:INFY), PTC Inc (NASDAQ:PMTC), Concur Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:CNQR), National Instruments Corp (NASDAQ:NATI), and ANSYS, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANSS). This group of stocks belong to the technical & system software industry and their market caps resemble ADSK’s market cap.
