To many of your fellow readers, hedge funds are perceived as bloated, outdated financial tools of an era lost to time. Although there are over 8,000 hedge funds trading currently, Insider Monkey focuses on the masters of this club, close to 525 funds. It is widely held that this group oversees most of the smart money’s total capital, and by monitoring their best investments, we’ve spotted a few investment strategies that have historically outperformed Mr. Market. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outstripped the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points a year 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 trumped the S&P 500 index by 33 percentage points in 11 months (find the details here).
Equally as crucial, bullish insider trading activity is another way to look at the world of equities. Obviously, there are plenty of incentives for an insider to downsize shares of his or her company, but only one, very obvious reason why they would buy. Several empirical studies have demonstrated the valuable potential of this method if shareholders understand what to do (learn more here).
Furthermore, we’re going to discuss the recent info surrounding RealNetworks Inc (NASDAQ:RNWK).
Hedge fund activity in RealNetworks Inc (NASDAQ:RNWK)
At Q2’s end, a total of 10 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of 25% from the first quarter. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes substantially.
When using filings from the hedgies we track, Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates had the largest position in RealNetworks Inc (NASDAQ:RNWK), worth close to $4 million, comprising less than 0.1%% of its total 13F portfolio. On Royce & Associates’s heels is Jim Simons of Renaissance Technologies, with a $3.7 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other hedge funds that hold long positions include Peter A. Wright’s P.A.W. CAPITAL PARTNERS, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management and Millennium Management Subsidiary’s Green Arrow Capital Management.
As aggregate interest spiked, certain bigger names were leading the bulls’ herd. Royce & Associates, managed by Chuck Royce, assembled the most valuable position in RealNetworks Inc (NASDAQ:RNWK). Royce & Associates had 4 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies also made a $3.7 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new RNWK investors: Peter A. Wright’s P.A.W. CAPITAL PARTNERS, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management, and Millennium Management Subsidiary’s Green Arrow Capital Management.
What have insiders been doing with RealNetworks Inc (NASDAQ:RNWK)?
Bullish insider trading is particularly usable when the primary stock in question has seen transactions within the past 180 days. Over the latest 180-day time frame, RealNetworks Inc (NASDAQ:RNWK) has experienced 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 RealNetworks Inc (NASDAQ:RNWK). These stocks are DTS Inc. (NASDAQ:DTSI), Active Network Inc (NYSE:ACTV), Actuate Corporation (NASDAQ:BIRT), Vringo, Inc. (NYSEAMEX:VRNG), and Guidance Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:GUID). All of these stocks are in the application software industry and their market caps are closest to RNWK’s market cap.
