Is Warner Chilcott Plc (NASDAQ:WCRX) the right pick for your portfolio? The smart money is selling. The number of long hedge fund positions dropped by 3 in recent months.
At the moment, there are a multitude of metrics market participants can use to monitor publicly traded companies. A pair of the most innovative are hedge fund and insider trading interest. At Insider Monkey, our research analyses have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the top hedge fund managers can beat the S&P 500 by a healthy margin (see just how much).
Equally as important, positive insider trading activity is another way to break down the stock market universe. As the old adage goes: there are many incentives for an insider to downsize shares of his or her company, but just one, very obvious reason why they would behave bullishly. Plenty of empirical studies have demonstrated the useful potential of this tactic if you know what to do (learn more here).
Keeping this in mind, it’s important to take a gander at the key action surrounding Warner Chilcott Plc (NASDAQ:WCRX).
Hedge fund activity in Warner Chilcott Plc (NASDAQ:WCRX)
Heading into 2013, a total of 22 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of -12% from the third quarter. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings meaningfully.
Of the funds we track, Jacob Gottlieb’s Visium Asset Management had the most valuable position in Warner Chilcott Plc (NASDAQ:WCRX), worth close to $113 million, accounting for 3.9% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is D. E. Shaw of D E Shaw, with a $110 million position; the fund has 0.3% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other hedge funds that are bullish include Steven Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors, Samuel Isaly’s OrbiMed Advisors and Gregg J. Powers’s Private Capital Management.
Due to the fact that Warner Chilcott Plc (NASDAQ:WCRX) has faced declining sentiment from hedge fund managers, logic holds that there lies a certain “tier” of hedge funds that elected to cut their positions entirely last quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management dropped the biggest investment of the “upper crust” of funds we watch, comprising about $45 million in stock.. John Overdeck and David Siegel’s fund, Two Sigma Advisors, also dropped its stock, about $6 million worth. These moves are important to note, as aggregate hedge fund interest fell by 3 funds last quarter.
What have insiders been doing with Warner Chilcott Plc (NASDAQ:WCRX)?
Insider purchases made by high-level executives is most useful when the company in focus has experienced transactions within the past six months. Over the latest 180-day time frame, Warner Chilcott Plc (NASDAQ:WCRX) has seen zero unique insiders purchasing, and 13 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).
With the results exhibited by our strategies, everyday investors must always pay attention to hedge fund and insider trading sentiment, and Warner Chilcott Plc (NASDAQ:WCRX) is no exception.
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