Hedge Funds Are Dumping Greenhill & Co., Inc. (GHL)

Greenhill & Co., Inc. (NYSE:GHL) investors should be aware of a decrease in enthusiasm from smart money of late.

To the average investor, there are plenty of metrics market participants can use to watch Mr. Market. A duo of the best are hedge fund and insider trading interest. At Insider Monkey, our research analyses have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the elite investment managers can trounce their index-focused peers by a very impressive margin (see just how much).

Equally as key, optimistic insider trading sentiment is a second way to parse down the marketplace. Just as you’d expect, there are a number of incentives for a corporate insider to get rid of shares of his or her company, but only one, very obvious reason why they would behave bullishly. Many empirical studies have demonstrated the impressive potential of this strategy if investors know where to look (learn more here).

With these “truths” under our belt, it’s important to take a glance at the recent action regarding Greenhill & Co., Inc. (NYSE:GHL).

What have hedge funds been doing with Greenhill & Co., Inc. (NYSE:GHL)?

Heading into 2013, a total of 6 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of -14% from one quarter earlier. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes considerably.

When looking at the hedgies we track, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group had the biggest position in Greenhill & Co., Inc. (NYSE:GHL), worth close to $20.8 million, comprising less than 0.1%% of its total 13F portfolio. On Citadel Investment Group’s heels is Fisher Asset Management, managed by Ken Fisher, which held a $9.4 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining hedge funds that hold long positions include Matthew Lindenbaum’s Basswood Capital, Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies and Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management.

Judging by the fact that Greenhill & Co., Inc. (NYSE:GHL) has witnessed bearish sentiment from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s easy to see that there lies a certain “tier” of money managers who sold off their full holdings in Q4. Interestingly, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management said goodbye to the largest investment of all the hedgies we monitor, worth an estimated $4.9 million in stock., and Steven Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors was right behind this move, as the fund dropped about $0.3 million worth. These transactions are intriguing to say the least, as total hedge fund interest dropped by 1 funds in Q4.

How have insiders been trading Greenhill & Co., Inc. (NYSE:GHL)?

Insider purchases made by high-level executives is at its handiest when the company we’re looking at has seen transactions within the past six months. Over the last 180-day time period, Greenhill & Co., Inc. (NYSE:GHL) has seen zero unique insiders buying, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

Let’s go over hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to Greenhill & Co., Inc. (NYSE:GHL). These stocks are Oppenheimer Holdings Inc. (USA) (NYSE:OPY), Raymond James Financial, Inc. (NYSE:RJF), Knight Capital Group Inc. (NYSE:KCG), Investment Technology Group (NYSE:ITG), and Stifel Financial Corp. (NYSE:SF). This group of stocks are in the investment brokerage – regional industry and their market caps resemble GHL’s market cap.

With the results demonstrated by our strategies, retail investors must always monitor hedge fund and insider trading activity, and Greenhill & Co., Inc. (NYSE:GHL) applies perfectly to this mantra.

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