Premiere Global Services, Inc. (NYSE:PGI) investors should pay attention to an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers of late.
According to most traders, hedge funds are seen as unimportant, outdated investment vehicles of years past. While there are greater than 8000 funds in operation today, we at Insider Monkey look at the top tier of this group, about 450 funds. It is widely believed that this group oversees the lion’s share of the hedge fund industry’s total asset base, and by paying attention to their best investments, we have spotted a number of investment strategies that have historically outpaced the market. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outperformed the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points annually for a decade in our back tests, and since we’ve began to sharing our picks with our subscribers at the end of August 2012, we have topped the S&P 500 index by 24 percentage points in 7 months (check out a sample of our picks).
Equally as key, optimistic insider trading activity is another way to break down the world of equities. There are a number of motivations for an upper level exec to get rid of shares of his or her company, but only one, very obvious reason why they would behave bullishly. Many academic studies have demonstrated the impressive potential of this method if investors understand what to do (learn more here).
Keeping this in mind, let’s take a gander at the key action regarding Premiere Global Services, Inc. (NYSE:PGI).
Hedge fund activity in Premiere Global Services, Inc. (NYSE:PGI)
At year’s end, a total of 9 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of 13% from one quarter earlier. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of notable hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes considerably.
When looking at the hedgies we track, Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates had the most valuable position in Premiere Global Services, Inc. (NYSE:PGI), worth close to $5.1 million, accounting for less than 0.1%% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Advanced Investment Partners, managed by Douglas W. Case, which held a $0.7 million position; the fund has 0.1% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining peers with similar optimism include D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw, Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management and John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors.
Consequently, key money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Ellington, managed by Mike Vranos, assembled the most outsized position in Premiere Global Services, Inc. (NYSE:PGI). Ellington had 0.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Steven Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors also made a $0.1 million investment in the stock during the quarter.
Insider trading activity in Premiere Global Services, Inc. (NYSE:PGI)
Bullish insider trading is most useful when the primary stock in question has seen transactions within the past six months. Over the last 180-day time frame, Premiere Global Services, Inc. (NYSE:PGI) has seen zero unique insiders buying, and 2 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).
Let’s check out hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to Premiere Global Services, Inc. (NYSE:PGI). These stocks are IDT Corporation (NYSE:IDT), Lumos Networks Corp (NASDAQ:LMOS), RigNet Inc (NASDAQ:RNET), Vonage Holdings Corp. (NYSE:VG), and Iridium Communications Inc. (NASDAQ:IRDM). This group of stocks are the members of the diversified communication services industry and their market caps resemble PGI’s market cap.
