General Mills, Inc. (NYSE:GIS) investors: listen up.
At the moment, there are tons of metrics market participants can use to analyze Mr. Market. A couple of the best are hedge fund and insider trading sentiment. At Insider Monkey, our research analyses have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the elite hedge fund managers can outpace the market by a healthy amount (see just how much).
Equally as key, bullish insider trading activity is a second way to analyze the investments you’re interested in. Obviously, there are many motivations for an executive to cut shares of his or her company, but just one, very clear reason why they would behave bullishly. Various academic studies have demonstrated the useful potential of this tactic if piggybackers know where to look (learn more here).
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s discuss the recent info for General Mills, Inc. (NYSE:GIS).
How have hedgies been trading General Mills, Inc. (NYSE:GIS)?
At the end of the second quarter, a total of 32 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of -6% from the previous quarter. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings meaningfully.
According to our 13F database, Ric Dillon’s Diamond Hill Capital had the largest position in General Mills, Inc. (NYSE:GIS), worth close to $162.1 million, comprising 1.7% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Mario Gabelli of GAMCO Investors, with a $134.2 million position; 0.8% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Some other hedgies with similar optimism include Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies, David Harding’s Winton Capital Management and Israel Englander’s Millennium Management.
As General Mills, Inc. (NYSE:GIS) has experienced declining interest from the top-tier hedge fund industry, we can see that there exists a select few hedgies that slashed their entire stakes at the end of the second quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Philippe Jabre’s Jabre Capital Partners dumped the biggest investment of all the hedgies we key on, comprising an estimated $29.6 million in stock. Matthew Tewksbury’s fund, Stevens Capital Management, also dropped its stock, about $8.7 million worth. These transactions are intriguing to say the least, as total hedge fund interest was cut by 2 funds at the end of the second quarter.
How are insiders trading General Mills, Inc. (NYSE:GIS)?
Legal insider trading, particularly when it’s bullish, is particularly usable when the primary stock in question has seen transactions within the past 180 days. Over the last half-year time period, General Mills, Inc. (NYSE:GIS) has seen zero unique insiders buying, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).
We’ll also examine the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to General Mills, Inc. (NYSE:GIS). These stocks are The J.M. Smucker Company (NYSE:SJM), Campbell Soup Company (NYSE:CPB), ConAgra Foods, Inc. (NYSE:CAG), Mead Johnson Nutrition CO (NYSE:MJN), and Kellogg Company (NYSE:K). This group of stocks are in the processed & packaged goods industry and their market caps match GIS’s market cap.
| Company Name | # of Hedge Funds | # of Insiders Buying | # of Insiders Selling |
| The J.M. Smucker Company (NYSE:SJM) | 20 | 0 | 0 |
| Campbell Soup Company (NYSE:CPB) | 20 | 0 | 0 |
| ConAgra Foods, Inc. (NYSE:CAG) | 32 | 0 | 0 |
| Mead Johnson Nutrition CO (NYSE:MJN) | 42 | 0 | 0 |
| Kellogg Company (NYSE:K) | 17 | 0 | 0 |
Using the results explained by the previously mentioned studies, average investors should always track hedge fund and insider trading sentiment, and General Mills, Inc. (NYSE:GIS) applies perfectly to this mantra.
