Do Hedge Funds and Insiders Love Oshkosh Corporation (OSK)?

Oshkosh Corporation (NYSE:OSK) investors: listen up.

If you were to ask many traders, hedge funds are seen as useless, outdated investment vehicles of a period lost to current times. Although there are over 8,000 hedge funds in operation currently, Insider Monkey focuses on the elite of this group, close to 525 funds. Analysts calculate that this group oversees the lion’s share of the smart money’s total capital, and by keeping an eye on their best investments, we’ve brought to light a number of investment strategies that have historically outpaced the broader indices. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outperformed the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points per annum 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 trumped the S&P 500 index by 33 percentage points in 11 months (explore the details and some picks here).

Equally as useful, optimistic insider trading activity is a second way to look at the stock market universe. Obviously, there are many reasons for an upper level exec to sell shares of his or her company, but only one, very clear reason why they would behave bullishly. Several empirical studies have demonstrated the valuable potential of this strategy if you understand what to do (learn more here).

What’s more, it’s important to discuss the newest info about Oshkosh Corporation (NYSE:OSK).

What does the smart money think about Oshkosh Corporation (NYSE:OSK)?

At Q2’s end, a total of 18 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of -25% from the first quarter. With hedgies’ capital changing hands, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes considerably.

According to our 13F database, Robert Rodriguez and Steven Romick’s First Pacific Advisors LLC had the largest position in Oshkosh Corporation (NYSE:OSK), worth close to $90.8 million, accounting for 1% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Third Avenue Management, managed by Martin Whitman, which held a $60.6 million position; 1.2% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Other hedgies that are bullish include Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management, David Dreman’s Dreman Value Management and Matthew Lindenbaum’s Basswood Capital.

As Oshkosh Corporation (NYSE:OSK) has faced declining interest from the top-tier hedge fund industry, we can see that there is a sect of money managers that elected to cut their positions entirely last quarter. Interestingly, Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies sold off the biggest investment of the 450+ funds we key on, worth close to $19.4 million in call options.. Israel Englander’s fund, Millennium Management, also sold off its call options., about $6.2 million worth. These moves are important to note, as aggregate hedge fund interest was cut by 6 funds last quarter.

Insider trading activity in Oshkosh Corporation (NYSE:OSK)

Insider buying is most useful when the company we’re looking at has experienced transactions within the past half-year. Over the latest six-month time period, Oshkosh Corporation (NYSE:OSK) has seen zero unique insiders purchasing, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

We’ll also take a look at the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to Oshkosh Corporation (NYSE:OSK). These stocks are Accuride Corporation (NYSE:ACW), Wabash National Corporation (NYSE:WNC), Hyster-Yale Materials Handling Inc (NYSE:HY), PACCAR Inc (NASDAQ:PCAR), and Navistar International Corp (NYSE:NAV). This group of stocks belong to the trucks & other vehicles industry and their market caps are similar to OSK’s market cap.

Using the returns explained by the previously mentioned tactics, average investors should always track hedge fund and insider trading sentiment, and Oshkosh Corporation (NYSE:OSK) shareholders fit into this picture quite nicely.

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