Do Hedge Funds and Insiders Love Lincoln National Corporation (LNC)?

Lincoln National Corporation (NYSE:LNC) shareholders have witnessed a decrease in hedge fund interest in recent months.

At the moment, there are tons of gauges market participants can use to monitor their holdings. A couple of the most useful are hedge fund and insider trading sentiment. At Insider Monkey, our research analyses have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the top fund managers can trounce the broader indices by a healthy amount (see just how much).

Equally as integral, positive insider trading sentiment is a second way to break down the stock market universe. Obviously, there are many stimuli for an insider to sell shares of his or her company, but just one, very clear reason why they would buy. Several empirical studies have demonstrated the impressive potential of this method if investors understand where to look (learn more here).

Keeping this in mind, it’s important to take a peek at the latest action surrounding Lincoln National Corporation (NYSE:LNC).

How have hedgies been trading Lincoln National Corporation (NYSE:LNC)?

At Q1’s end, a total of 27 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of 0% from one quarter earlier. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings considerably.

Of the funds we track, Steven Richman’s East Side Capital (RR Partners) had the biggest position in Lincoln National Corporation (NYSE:LNC), worth close to $226.4 million, accounting for 11.3% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Ken Griffin of Citadel Investment Group, with a $127.5 million position; 0.2% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Other hedgies that are bullish include Michael Messner’s Seminole Capital (Investment Mgmt), Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management and Sander Gerber’s Hudson Bay Capital Management.

Because Lincoln National Corporation (NYSE:LNC) has experienced bearish sentiment from the aggregate hedge fund industry, logic holds that there lies a certain “tier” of fund managers who were dropping their positions entirely last quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson’s Adage Capital Management dumped the largest stake of all the hedgies we monitor, totaling an estimated $19.3 million in stock.. Mike Vranos’s fund, Ellington, also sold off its stock, about $1.2 million worth. These transactions are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).

Insider trading activity in Lincoln National Corporation (NYSE:LNC)

Insider purchases made by high-level executives is best served when the company in question has experienced transactions within the past 180 days. Over the latest six-month time frame, Lincoln National Corporation (NYSE:LNC) has seen zero unique insiders buying, and 7 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 Lincoln National Corporation (NYSE:LNC). These stocks are Reinsurance Group of America Inc (NYSE:RGA), Sun Life Financial Inc. (USA) (NYSE:SLF), Genworth Financial Inc (NYSE:GNW), Torchmark Corporation (NYSE:TMK), and AEGON N.V. (ADR) (NYSE:AEG). This group of stocks are in the life insurance industry and their market caps resemble LNC’s market cap.