Do Hedge Funds and Insiders Love ShoreTel, Inc. (SHOR)?

ShoreTel, Inc. (NASDAQ:SHOR) investors should pay attention to a decrease in support from the world’s most elite money managers lately.

In the financial world, there are tons of metrics market participants can use to monitor publicly traded companies. A duo of the most innovative are hedge fund and insider trading sentiment. At Insider Monkey, our studies have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the top fund managers can outperform the broader indices by a superb amount (see just how much).

Just as important, bullish insider trading sentiment is a second way to parse down the marketplace. Obviously, there are many stimuli for an insider to sell shares of his or her company, but just one, very simple reason why they would behave bullishly. Many empirical studies have demonstrated the valuable potential of this method if “monkeys” know what to do (learn more here).

Keeping this in mind, we’re going to take a peek at the key action surrounding ShoreTel, Inc. (NASDAQ:SHOR).

What does the smart money think about ShoreTel, Inc. (NASDAQ:SHOR)?

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 5 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of -38% from one quarter earlier. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few noteworthy hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings substantially.

When looking at the hedgies we track, Diker Management, managed by Mark N. Diker, holds the biggest position in ShoreTel, Inc. (NASDAQ:SHOR). Diker Management has a $10.9 million position in the stock, comprising 3% of its 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by SAC Capital Advisors, managed by Steven Cohen, which held a $3.7 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other peers that hold long positions include Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies, D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw and Israel Englander’s Millennium Management.

Because ShoreTel, Inc. (NASDAQ:SHOR) has experienced falling interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, logic holds that there exists a select few money managers that elected to cut their full holdings in Q1. Interestingly, Philip Hempleman’s Ardsley Partners said goodbye to the largest investment of the 450+ funds we watch, worth an estimated $0.1 million in stock.. Peter Algert and Kevin Coldiron’s fund, Algert Coldiron Investors, also cut its stock, about $0.1 million worth. These bearish behaviors are important to note, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 3 funds in Q1.

How have insiders been trading ShoreTel, Inc. (NASDAQ:SHOR)?

Insider purchases made by high-level executives is most useful when the company in focus has experienced transactions within the past half-year. Over the last six-month time frame, ShoreTel, Inc. (NASDAQ:SHOR) has experienced zero unique insiders purchasing, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

Let’s also review hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to ShoreTel, Inc. (NASDAQ:SHOR). These stocks are Gilat Satellite Networks Ltd. (NASDAQ:GILT), Numerex Corp. (NASDAQ:NMRX), KVH Industries, Inc. (NASDAQ:KVHI), Aviat Networks Inc (NASDAQ:AVNW), and Mitel Networks Corporation (NASDAQ:MITL). All of these stocks are in the communication equipment industry and their market caps are similar to SHOR’s market cap.

With the results exhibited by the aforementioned studies, retail investors should always keep an eye on hedge fund and insider trading sentiment, and ShoreTel, Inc. (NASDAQ:SHOR) is an important part of this process.

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