Cal Dive International, Inc. (NYSE:DVR) was in 10 hedge funds’ portfolio at the end of the first quarter of 2013. DVR has seen a decrease in enthusiasm from smart money recently. There were 10 hedge funds in our database with DVR holdings at the end of the previous quarter.
In the eyes of most market participants, hedge funds are assumed to be unimportant, outdated investment vehicles of the past. While there are more than 8000 funds trading at the moment, we choose to focus on the elite of this club, around 450 funds. It is widely believed that this group has its hands on most of the smart money’s total capital, and by paying attention to their best picks, we have determined a few investment strategies that have historically outperformed 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 outperformed 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 parse down the world of equities. Just as you’d expect, there are many stimuli for an insider to sell shares of his or her company, but just one, very obvious reason why they would buy. Various empirical studies have demonstrated the impressive potential of this tactic if piggybackers understand where to look (learn more here).
Now, we’re going to take a peek at the recent action encompassing Cal Dive International, Inc. (NYSE:DVR).
How have hedgies been trading Cal Dive International, Inc. (NYSE:DVR)?
In preparation for this quarter, a total of 10 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of 0% from the first quarter. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes significantly.
Seeing as Cal Dive International, Inc. (NYSE:DVR) has witnessed a declination in interest from the smart money, it’s easy to see that there exists a select few hedgies that decided to sell off their positions entirely heading into Q2. It’s worth mentioning that Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital dumped the largest investment of the “upper crust” of funds we monitor, valued at close to $0.2 million in stock.. Cliff Asness’s fund, AQR Capital Management, also cut its stock, about $0 million worth. These transactions are intriguing to say the least, as aggregate hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).
Insider trading activity in Cal Dive International, Inc. (NYSE:DVR)
Insider buying is particularly usable when the company we’re looking at has seen transactions within the past half-year. Over the latest six-month time frame, Cal Dive International, Inc. (NYSE:DVR) has experienced 1 unique insiders buying, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).
Let’s also take a look at hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to Cal Dive International, Inc. (NYSE:DVR). These stocks are Dawson Geophysical Company (NASDAQ:DWSN), Natural Gas Services Group, Inc. (NYSE:NGS), TGC Industries Inc (NASDAQ:TGE), and North American Energy Partners Inc.(USA) (NYSE:NOA). This group of stocks are in the oil & gas equipment & services industry and their market caps resemble DVR’s market cap.
| Company Name | # of Hedge Funds | # of Insiders Buying | # of Insiders Selling |
| Dawson Geophysical Company (NASDAQ:DWSN) | 5 | 0 | 1 |
| Natural Gas Services Group, Inc. (NYSE:NGS) | 4 | 0 | 2 |
| TGC Industries Inc (NASDAQ:TGE) | 5 | 0 | 1 |
| North American Energy Partners Inc.(USA) (NYSE:NOA) | 10 | 0 | 0 |
With the returns shown by our time-tested strategies, everyday investors must always keep an eye on hedge fund and insider trading activity, and Cal Dive International, Inc. (NYSE:DVR) applies perfectly to this mantra.
