Do Hedge Funds and Insiders Love Mitcham Industries, Inc. (MIND)?

Is it smart to be bullish on Mitcham Industries, Inc. (NASDAQ:MIND)?

In today’s marketplace, there are many gauges investors can use to watch the equity markets. A duo of the most innovative are hedge fund and insider trading activity. At Insider Monkey, our research analyses have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best money managers can outpace the S&P 500 by a significant margin (see just how much).

Equally as useful, optimistic insider trading activity is a second way to look at the financial markets. Just as you’d expect, there are many incentives for an insider to cut shares of his or her company, but only one, very obvious reason why they would buy. Various academic studies have demonstrated the valuable potential of this method if shareholders know what to do (learn more here).

Thus, we’re going to study the latest info about Mitcham Industries, Inc. (NASDAQ:MIND).

Hedge fund activity in Mitcham Industries, Inc. (NASDAQ:MIND)

At the end of the second quarter, a total of 6 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of -33% from one quarter earlier. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes significantly.

According to our 13F database, Ariel Investments, managed by John W. Rogers, holds the most valuable position in Mitcham Industries, Inc. (NASDAQ:MIND). Ariel Investments has a $46.8 million position in the stock, comprising 0.8% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is AQR Capital Management, managed by Cliff Asness, which held a $2.2 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other peers that are bullish include Michael Doheny’s Freshford Capital Management, John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors and Whitney Tilson’s T2 Partners.

Because Mitcham Industries, Inc. (NASDAQ:MIND) has faced dropping sentiment from upper-tier hedge fund managers, logic holds that there is a sect of funds that slashed their full holdings last quarter. Interestingly, Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates dropped the biggest position of all the hedgies we track, totaling close to $0.8 million in stock. Zeke Ashton’s fund, Centaur Capital Partners, also cut its stock, about $0.4 million worth. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as total hedge fund interest was cut by 3 funds last quarter.

What have insiders been doing with Mitcham Industries, Inc. (NASDAQ:MIND)?

Insider buying is most useful when the primary stock in question has experienced transactions within the past 180 days. Over the latest half-year time period, Mitcham Industries, Inc. (NASDAQ:MIND) has experienced zero unique insiders purchasing, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

We’ll go over the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to Mitcham Industries, Inc. (NASDAQ:MIND). These stocks are GSI Group Inc. (USA) (NASDAQ:GSIG), Zygo Corporation (NASDAQ:ZIGO), Hurco Companies, Inc. (NASDAQ:HURC), Telenav Inc (NASDAQ:TNAV), and Vishay Precision Group Inc (NYSE:VPG). This group of stocks are the members of the scientific & technical instruments industry and their market caps are similar to MIND’s market cap.