Do Hedge Funds and Insiders Love Chesapeake Utilities Corporation (CPK)?

Chesapeake Utilities Corporation (NYSE:CPK) shareholders have witnessed a decrease in support from the world’s most elite money managers lately.

To most stock holders, hedge funds are perceived as worthless, outdated financial tools of yesteryear. While there are more than 8000 funds in operation at the moment, we at Insider Monkey hone in on the leaders of this club, around 450 funds. It is estimated that this group has its hands on the majority of the smart money’s total capital, and by monitoring their highest performing picks, we have revealed a few investment strategies that have historically beaten the market. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy beat the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points annually for a decade in our back tests, and since we’ve started sharing our picks with our subscribers at the end of August 2012, we have beaten the S&P 500 index by 24 percentage points in 7 months (see the details here).

Just as integral, bullish insider trading activity is a second way to parse down the investments you’re interested in. There are a variety of incentives for an upper level exec to downsize shares of his or her company, but only one, very obvious reason why they would behave bullishly. Many academic studies have demonstrated the market-beating potential of this method if investors know what to do (learn more here).

Consequently, let’s take a peek at the latest action regarding Chesapeake Utilities Corporation (NYSE:CPK).

What does the smart money think about Chesapeake Utilities Corporation (NYSE:CPK)?

At year’s end, a total of 7 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of 0% from the previous quarter. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings substantially.

Of the funds we track, Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies had the most valuable position in Chesapeake Utilities Corporation (NYSE:CPK), worth close to $5.9 million, comprising less than 0.1%% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Israel Englander of Millennium Management, with a $1 million position; less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Some other peers that are bullish include Mario Gabelli’s GAMCO Investors, Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management and John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors.

Due to the fact that Chesapeake Utilities Corporation (NYSE:CPK) has witnessed bearish sentiment from hedge fund managers, logic holds that there were a few hedge funds that elected to cut their entire stakes last quarter. Intriguingly, Mike Vranos’s Ellington dropped the largest investment of the “upper crust” of funds we key on, valued at an estimated $0.2 million in stock. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as total hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).

Insider trading activity in Chesapeake Utilities Corporation (NYSE:CPK)

Insider trading activity, especially when it’s bullish, is best served when the company we’re looking at has seen transactions within the past half-year. Over the last six-month time frame, Chesapeake Utilities Corporation (NYSE:CPK) has experienced 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 Chesapeake Utilities Corporation (NYSE:CPK). These stocks are Clean Energy Fuels Corp (NASDAQ:CLNE), Laclede Group Inc (NYSE:LG), Niska Gas Storage Partners LLC (NYSE:NKA), Transportadora de Gas del Sur SA (ADR) (NYSE:TGS), and Southcross Energy Partners LP (NYSE:SXE). This group of stocks are in the gas utilities industry and their market caps are closest to CPK’s market cap.