Hedge Funds Are Crazy About Western Digital Corp. (WDC)

Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ:WDC) was in 33 hedge funds’ portfolio at the end of March. WDC investors should pay attention to an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers of late. There were 32 hedge funds in our database with WDC holdings at the end of the previous quarter.

If you’d ask most shareholders, hedge funds are seen as worthless, outdated investment tools of yesteryear. While there are over 8000 funds in operation at present, we at Insider Monkey look at the crème de la crème of this group, about 450 funds. It is estimated that this group has its hands on the lion’s share of the hedge fund industry’s total capital, and by paying attention to their best picks, we have identified a few investment strategies that have historically beaten Mr. 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 outclassed the S&P 500 index by 23.3 percentage points in 8 months (explore the details and some picks here).

Just as integral, bullish insider trading sentiment is another way to parse down the marketplace. As the old adage goes: there are plenty of stimuli for an upper level exec to get rid of shares of his or her company, but just one, very clear reason why they would buy. Several empirical studies have demonstrated the impressive potential of this method if “monkeys” know what to do (learn more here).

Keeping this in mind, let’s take a look at the latest action encompassing Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ:WDC).

What have hedge funds been doing with Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ:WDC)?

At Q1’s end, a total of 33 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of 3% from one quarter earlier.

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, key hedge funds were breaking ground themselves. First Pacific Advisors LLC, managed by Robert Rodriguez and Steven Romick, established the most outsized position in Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ:WDC). First Pacific Advisors LLC had 169 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Mark Kingdon’s Kingdon Capital also initiated a $7 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new WDC investors: Brian Ashford-Russell and Tim Woolley’s Polar Capital, Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management, and SAC Subsidiary’s Sigma Capital Management.

How are insiders trading Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ:WDC)?

Insider purchases made by high-level executives is particularly usable when the company in focus has seen transactions within the past 180 days. Over the latest six-month time frame, Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ:WDC) has experienced zero unique insiders buying, and 11 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

Let’s go over hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ:WDC). These stocks are Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:BRCD), EMC Corporation (NYSE:EMC), SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK), Seagate Technology PLC (NASDAQ:STX), and NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP). All of these stocks are in the data storage devices industry and their market caps are closest to WDC’s market cap.

With the results demonstrated by the aforementioned research, everyday investors should always monitor hedge fund and insider trading activity, and Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ:WDC) shareholders fit into this picture quite nicely.

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