Do Hedge Funds and Insiders Love Seacor Holdings, Inc. (CKH)?

Seacor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CKH) has seen a decrease in enthusiasm from smart money lately.

According to most investors, hedge funds are viewed as worthless, old investment vehicles of years past. While there are more than 8000 funds trading at present, we at Insider Monkey choose to focus on the upper echelon of this club, close to 450 funds. It is estimated that this group has its hands on the majority of the smart money’s total asset base, and by monitoring their top equity investments, we have brought to light a few investment strategies that have historically outstripped the S&P 500 index. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outpaced the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points a year 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 outperformed the S&P 500 index by 23.3 percentage points in 8 months (see all of our picks from August).

Equally as key, bullish insider trading activity is another way to parse down the marketplace. There are plenty of motivations for an insider to drop shares of his or her company, but just one, very obvious reason why they would initiate a purchase. Various empirical studies have demonstrated the market-beating potential of this tactic if shareholders know what to do (learn more here).

With all of this in mind, let’s take a gander at the recent action encompassing Seacor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CKH).

Hedge fund activity in Seacor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CKH)

In preparation for this quarter, a total of 16 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of 0% from the first quarter. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes meaningfully.

Of the funds we track, Royce & Associates, managed by Chuck Royce, holds the most valuable position in Seacor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CKH). Royce & Associates has a $107.8 million position in the stock, comprising 0.3% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Charles de Vaulx of International Value Advisers, with a $43.9 million position; the fund has 1% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other peers that hold long positions include Martin Whitman’s Third Avenue Management, Michael Lowenstein’s Kensico Capital and Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management.

Because Seacor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CKH) has faced falling interest from the aggregate hedge fund industry, we can see that there was a specific group of hedgies that slashed their full holdings in Q1. It’s worth mentioning that Charles de Vaulx’s International Value Advisers cut the largest stake of the 450+ funds we key on, valued at an estimated $52.6 million in stock., and Michael Doheny of Freshford Capital Management was right behind this move, as the fund dropped about $10 million worth. These bearish behaviors are intriguing to say the least, as aggregate hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).

How are insiders trading Seacor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CKH)?

Insider trading activity, especially when it’s bullish, is most useful when the company in question has seen transactions within the past half-year. Over the latest 180-day time period, Seacor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CKH) has seen zero unique insiders buying, and 6 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

Let’s also review hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to Seacor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CKH). These stocks are Scorpio Tankers Inc. (NYSE:STNG), Golar LNG Partners LP (NASDAQ:GMLP), Costamare Inc (NYSE:CMRE), Seaspan Corporation (NYSE:SSW), and Ship Finance International Limited (NYSE:SFL). All of these stocks are in the shipping industry and their market caps match CKH’s market cap.