If you were to ask many of your peers, hedge funds are seen as useless, old financial tools of a forgotten age. Although there are In excess of 8,000 hedge funds in operation today, Insider Monkey focuses on the elite of this club, about 525 funds. It is widely held that this group has its hands on the majority of the hedge fund industry’s total capital, and by watching their highest quality equity investments, we’ve identified a number of 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 trumped the S&P 500 index by 33 percentage points in 11 months (explore the details and some picks here).
Equally as crucial, optimistic insider trading sentiment is another way to look at the world of equities. As the old adage goes: there are plenty of motivations for an executive to get rid of shares of his or her company, but just one, very simple reason why they would initiate a purchase. Several academic studies have demonstrated the useful potential of this method if investors understand where to look (learn more here).
What’s more, we’re going to discuss the recent info surrounding Fidelity National Information Services (NYSE:FIS).
Hedge fund activity in Fidelity National Information Services (NYSE:FIS)
Heading into Q3, a total of 34 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of -3% from the previous quarter. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings substantially.
When using filings from the hedgies we track, Boykin Curry’s Eagle Capital Management had the largest position in Fidelity National Information Services (NYSE:FIS), worth close to $375 million, comprising 2% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Glenview Capital, managed by Larry Robbins, which held a $246.7 million position; the fund has 2.3% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other hedge funds that hold long positions include Chase Coleman and Feroz Dewan’s Tiger Global Management LLC, William von Mueffling’s Cantillon Capital Management and Lee Ainslie’s Maverick Capital.
Judging by the fact that Fidelity National Information Services (NYSE:FIS) has faced declining interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s easy to see that there is a sect of hedge funds that slashed their entire stakes at the end of the second quarter. Interestingly, Andrew J. M. Spokes’s Farallon Capital dumped the largest stake of all the hedgies we track, comprising close to $207.3 million in stock. Clint Carlson’s fund, Carlson Capital, also cut its stock, about $46.3 million worth. These bearish behaviors are intriguing to say the least, as total hedge fund interest dropped by 1 funds at the end of the second quarter.
How are insiders trading Fidelity National Information Services (NYSE:FIS)?
Insider buying made by high-level executives is most useful when the company we’re looking at has experienced transactions within the past half-year. Over the last 180-day time frame, Fidelity National Information Services (NYSE:FIS) has seen zero unique insiders purchasing, and 4 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).
We’ll check out the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to Fidelity National Information Services (NYSE:FIS). These stocks are FleetCor Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:FLT), Alliance Data Systems Corporation (NYSE:ADS), Verisk Analytics, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRSK), Moody’s Corporation (NYSE:MCO), and Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ:FISV). This group of stocks belong to the business services industry and their market caps are similar to FIS’s market cap.
