Hedge Funds Are Buying ValueClick Inc (NASDAQ:VCLK)

Is ValueClick Inc (NASDAQ:VCLK) ready to raly soon? The smart money is becoming hopeful. The number of long hedge fund positions improved by 2 lately.

If you’d ask most market participants, hedge funds are seen as unimportant, outdated investment tools of the past. While there are over 8000 funds with their doors open at the moment, we look at the masters of this group, close to 450 funds. It is widely believed that this group oversees the majority of the hedge fund industry’s total asset base, and by watching their highest performing equity investments, we have spotted a number of investment strategies that have historically beaten the broader indices. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outperformed 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 beaten the S&P 500 index by 25 percentage points in 6.5 month (check out a sample of our picks).

Just as important, optimistic insider trading activity is another way to break down the investments you’re interested in. As the old adage goes: there are a number of reasons for an insider to sell shares of his or her company, but just one, very obvious reason why they would buy. Various empirical studies have demonstrated the impressive potential of this tactic if shareholders know what to do (learn more here).

With these “truths” under our belt, we’re going to take a gander at the recent action regarding ValueClick Inc (NASDAQ:VCLK).

How are hedge funds trading ValueClick Inc (NASDAQ:VCLK)?

In preparation for this year, a total of 16 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of 14% from one quarter earlier. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes substantially.

According to our comprehensive database, Amy Minella’s Cardinal Capital had the biggest position in ValueClick Inc (NASDAQ:VCLK), worth close to $45 million, accounting for 3% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Chuck Royce of Royce & Associates, with a $29 million position; 0.1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Some other hedgies that are bullish include Scott Burney’s Bluefin Investment Management, SAC Subsidiary’s Sigma Capital Management and Andy Redleaf’s Whitebox Advisors.

Now, some big names have been driving this bullishness. Hutchin Hill Capital, managed by Neil Chriss, created the most valuable position in ValueClick Inc (NASDAQ:VCLK). Hutchin Hill Capital had 2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Thomas E. Claugus’s GMT Capital also made a $1 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new VCLK positions are Jeffrey Vinik’s Vinik Asset Management, John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors, and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group.

What do corporate executives and insiders think about ValueClick Inc (NASDAQ:VCLK)?

Insider purchases made by high-level executives is best served when the primary stock in question has experienced transactions within the past half-year. Over the latest half-year time period, ValueClick Inc (NASDAQ:VCLK) has seen zero unique insiders purchasing, and 6 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

With the results shown by Insider Monkey’s tactics, everyday investors must always keep an eye on hedge fund and insider trading sentiment, and ValueClick Inc (NASDAQ:VCLK) applies perfectly to this mantra.

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Insider Monkey’s small-cap strategy returned 29.2% between September 2012 and February 2013 versus 8.7% for the S&P 500 index. Try it now by clicking the link above.