Hedge Funds Are Betting On Maiden Holdings, Ltd. (MHLD): State Auto Financial (STFC), The Navigators Group, Inc (NAVG)

Maiden Holdings, Ltd. (NASDAQ:MHLD) has experienced an increase in enthusiasm from smart money of late.

To the average investor, there are dozens of metrics market participants can use to track publicly traded companies. Some of the most useful are hedge fund and insider trading movement. At Insider Monkey, our studies have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the top hedge fund managers can outperform their index-focused peers by a significant amount (see just how much).

Just as important, optimistic insider trading sentiment is a second way to break down the investments you’re interested in. Just as you’d expect, there are a number of incentives for a corporate insider to cut shares of his or her company, but only one, very simple reason why they would buy. Plenty of academic studies have demonstrated the impressive potential of this strategy if investors know where to look (learn more here).

Keeping this in mind, we’re going to take a look at the recent action surrounding Maiden Holdings, Ltd. (NASDAQ:MHLD).

How are hedge funds trading Maiden Holdings, Ltd. (NASDAQ:MHLD)?

Heading into 2013, a total of 12 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of 9% from one quarter earlier. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings significantly.

When looking at the hedgies we track, Kensico Capital, managed by Michael Lowenstein, holds the biggest position in Maiden Holdings, Ltd. (NASDAQ:MHLD). Kensico Capital has a $45 million position in the stock, comprising 1.4% of its 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Corsair Capital Management, managed by Jay Petschek and Steven Major, which held a $9 million position; the fund has 1.6% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other hedgies that are bullish include Bruce Silver’s Silver Capital Management LLC, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management and Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies.

As industrywide interest jumped, specific money managers have been driving this bullishness. Ellington, managed by Mike Vranos, initiated the largest position in Maiden Holdings, Ltd. (NASDAQ:MHLD). Ellington had 0 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group also initiated a $0 million position during the quarter. The only other fund with a brand new MHLD position is Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp.

How are insiders trading Maiden Holdings, Ltd. (NASDAQ:MHLD)?

Bullish insider trading is best served when the company we’re looking at has seen transactions within the past 180 days. Over the last 180-day time frame, Maiden Holdings, Ltd. (NASDAQ:MHLD) has seen 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 Maiden Holdings, Ltd. (NASDAQ:MHLD). These stocks are State Auto Financial (NASDAQ:STFC), The Navigators Group, Inc (NASDAQ:NAVG), Horace Mann Educators Corporation (NYSE:HMN), Employers Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:EIG), and Safety Insurance Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:SAFT). This group of stocks are the members of the property & casualty insurance industry and their market caps are similar to MHLD’s market cap.

With the returns demonstrated by Insider Monkey’s research, everyday investors must always monitor hedge fund and insider trading sentiment, and Maiden Holdings, Ltd. (NASDAQ:MHLD) is no exception.

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