Despite its sometimes spotty reputation with customer service, Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSA) is still one heck of a business. Hedge funds sure think so.
If you were to ask many traders, hedge funds are perceived as delayed, outdated investment vehicles of a forgotten age. Although there are more than 8,000 hedge funds with their doors open currently, this site aim at the moguls of this club, close to 525 funds. It is assumed that this group oversees the majority of the smart money’s total capital, and by monitoring their highest quality equity investments, we’ve identified a number of investment strategies that have historically beaten the broader indices. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy beat the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points per 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 trumped the S&P 500 index by 33 percentage points in 11 months (find a sample of our picks).
Equally as key, optimistic insider trading activity is a second way to look at the financial markets. Just as you’d expect, there are a number of motivations for a corporate insider to get rid of shares of his or her company, but just one, very obvious reason why they would buy. Plenty of academic studies have demonstrated the valuable potential of this method if piggybackers understand what to do (learn more here).
Keeping this in mind, let’s study the latest info for Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSA).
What does the smart money think about Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSA)?
Heading into Q3, a total of 67 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of 22% from the first quarter. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings substantially.
Out of the hedge funds we follow, Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global had the largest position in Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSA), worth close to $916.5 million, accounting for 5.1% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Paul Ruddock and Steve Heinz of Lansdowne Partners, with a $853.2 million position; 10.8% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Some other peers with similar optimism include Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management, John Armitage’s Egerton Capital Limited and Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital.
As aggregate interest spiked, certain bigger names have been driving this bullishness. Viking Global, managed by Andreas Halvorsen, assembled the most outsized position in Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSA). Viking Global had 916.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Paul Ruddockáand Steve Heinz’s Lansdowne Partners also made a $853.2 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new CMCSA positions are Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management, John Armitage’s Egerton Capital Limited, and Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital.
What do corporate executives and insiders think about Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSA)?
Insider buying is most useful when the company in question has seen transactions within the past 180 days. Over the latest six-month time period, Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSA) has experienced zero unique insiders purchasing, and 4 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 Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSA). These stocks are Liberty Global Inc. (NASDAQ:LBTYA), Discovery Communications Inc. (NASDAQ:DISCA), Time Warner Cable Inc (NYSE:TWC), Viacom, Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAB), and DIRECTV (NASDAQ:DTV). This group of stocks belong to the catv systems industry and their market caps resemble CMCSA’s market cap.
