Hedge Funds Are Crazy About Virgin Media Inc. (VMED)

Virgin Media Inc. (NASDAQ:VMED) has seen an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers of late.

To most shareholders, hedge funds are seen as slow, old investment vehicles of the past. While there are greater than 8000 funds with their doors open at present, we choose to focus on the elite of this club, close to 450 funds. It is estimated that this group controls the lion’s share of the smart money’s total asset base, and by watching their best picks, we have unsheathed a few investment strategies that have historically beaten the S&P 500 index. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outpaced the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points a 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 beaten the S&P 500 index by 23.3 percentage points in 8 months (explore the details and some picks here).

Just as key, optimistic insider trading sentiment is a second way to break down the world of equities. Just as you’d expect, there are lots of stimuli for an insider to sell shares of his or her company, but only one, very simple reason why they would buy. Plenty of empirical studies have demonstrated the valuable potential of this method if “monkeys” understand what to do (learn more here).

Now, we’re going to take a peek at the key action surrounding Virgin Media Inc. (NASDAQ:VMED).

What does the smart money think about Virgin Media Inc. (NASDAQ:VMED)?

Heading into Q2, a total of 59 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of 64% from the first quarter.

Now, key money managers have been driving this bullishness. Third Point, managed by Dan Loeb, assembled the most valuable position in Virgin Media Inc. (NASDAQ:VMED). Third Point had 538.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Thomas Steyer’s Farallon Capital also initiated a $386.9 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new VMED positions are Stephen Mandel’s Lone Pine Capital, Nick Niell’s Arrowgrass Capital Partners, and Robert Emil Zoellner’s Alpine Associates.

Insider trading activity in Virgin Media Inc. (NASDAQ:VMED)

Insider buying is at its handiest when the primary stock in question has seen transactions within the past 180 days. Over the latest six-month time period, Virgin Media Inc. (NASDAQ:VMED) has seen zero unique insiders purchasing, and 9 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

Let’s also examine hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to Virgin Media Inc. (NASDAQ:VMED). These stocks are Discovery Communications Inc. (NASDAQ:DISCA), Liberty Global Inc. (NASDAQ:LBTYA), DISH Network Corp. (NASDAQ:DISH), Charter Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:CHTR), and Shaw Communications Inc (USA) (NYSE:SJR). This group of stocks are the members of the catv systems industry and their market caps are similar to VMED’s market cap.

With the results shown by Insider Monkey’s tactics, everyday investors should always watch hedge fund and insider trading sentiment, and Virgin Media Inc. (NASDAQ:VMED) applies perfectly to this mantra.

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