To many of your peers, hedge funds are assumed to be delayed, outdated financial vehicles of a forgotten age. Although there are In excess of 8,000 hedge funds with their doors open currently, Insider Monkey looks at the bigwigs of this group, close to 525 funds. Analysts calculate that this group oversees the lion’s share of the hedge fund industry’s total capital, and by monitoring their highest performing investments, we’ve identified a few investment strategies that have historically outpaced Mr. Market. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outstripped the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points per 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 outperformed the S&P 500 index by 33 percentage points in 11 months (explore the details and some picks here).
Equally as useful, optimistic insider trading activity is another way to look at the financial markets. As the old adage goes: there are a number of stimuli for an executive to sell shares of his or her company, but only one, very clear reason why they would behave bullishly. Many academic studies have demonstrated the valuable potential of this tactic if piggybackers know what to do (learn more here).
What’s more, we’re going to analyze the newest info surrounding Chico’s FAS, Inc. (NYSE:CHS).
What have hedge funds been doing with Chico’s FAS, Inc. (NYSE:CHS)?
At the end of the second quarter, a total of 19 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of -30% from the previous quarter. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an “upper tier” of notable hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings considerably.
Since Chico’s FAS, Inc. (NYSE:CHS) has faced a fall in interest from the top-tier hedge fund industry, we can see that there were a few hedgies that decided to sell off their full holdings in Q1. At the top of the heap, Donald Chiboucis’s Columbus Circle Investors dropped the largest position of the “upper crust” of funds we watch, comprising about $44.5 million in stock. Peter Rathjens Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s fund, Arrowstreet Capital, also dropped its stock, about $29.3 million worth. These moves are important to note, as total hedge fund interest fell by 8 funds in Q1.
How are insiders trading Chico’s FAS, Inc. (NYSE:CHS)?
Insider buying made by high-level executives is particularly usable when the company we’re looking at has seen transactions within the past half-year. Over the latest six-month time frame, Chico’s FAS, Inc. (NYSE:CHS) has seen zero unique insiders buying, and 6 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).
We’ll go over the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to Chico’s FAS, Inc. (NYSE:CHS). These stocks are American Eagle Outfitters (NYSE:AEO), Guess?, Inc. (NYSE:GES), The Buckle, Inc. (NYSE:BKE), Ascena Retail Group Inc (NASDAQ:ASNA), and DSW Inc. (NYSE:DSW). This group of stocks are in the apparel stores industry and their market caps match CHS’s market cap.
