Hedge Funds Are Dumping Hawaiian Holdings, Inc. (HA)

What’s a smart Hawaiian Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:HA) investor to do?

If you were to ask many traders, hedge funds are assumed to be useless, outdated financial vehicles of a period lost to current times. Although there are over 8,000 hedge funds trading in present day, this site focuses on the bigwigs of this club, close to 525 funds. It is widely held that this group controls the lion’s share of the hedge fund industry’s total capital, and by keeping an eye on their highest quality investments, we’ve brought to light a few investment strategies that have historically outpaced the market. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy beat the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points annually 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 trumped the S&P 500 index by 33 percentage points in 11 months (find the details here).

Just as useful, optimistic insider trading activity is a second way to look at the investments you’re interested in. Just as you’d expect, there are a number of reasons for a bullish insider to downsize shares of his or her company, but only one, very clear reason why they would behave bullishly. Plenty of academic studies have demonstrated the valuable potential of this tactic if “monkeys” know where to look (learn more here).

Thus, we’re going to examine the newest info about Hawaiian Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:HA).

What does the smart money think about Hawaiian Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:HA)?

At the end of the second quarter, a total of 8 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of -50% from the previous quarter. With hedgies’ capital changing hands, there exists a few noteworthy hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes significantly.

Out of the hedge funds we follow, Zac Hirzel’s Hirzel Capital Management had the biggest position in Hawaiian Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:HA), worth close to $30.9 million, comprising 7.5% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Q Investments (Specter Holdings), managed by Geoffrey Raynor, which held a $4.9 million position; 1.1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Other hedge funds that hold long positions include Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management and Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital.

Judging by the fact that Hawaiian Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:HA) has witnessed a fall in interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s safe to say that there were a few funds who sold off their positions entirely at the end of the second quarter. At the top of the heap, Matthew Knauer and Mina Faltas’s Nokota Management cut the biggest position of the “upper crust” of funds we key on, comprising about $10.1 million in stock. Israel Englander’s fund, Millennium Management, also sold off its stock, about $3.6 million worth. These transactions are intriguing to say the least, as total hedge fund interest fell by 8 funds at the end of the second quarter.

How are insiders trading Hawaiian Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:HA)?

Insider buying is most useful when the primary stock in question has experienced transactions within the past 180 days. Over the latest half-year time period, Hawaiian Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:HA) has seen zero unique insiders buying, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

We’ll also examine the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to Hawaiian Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:HA). These stocks are Allegiant Travel Company (NASDAQ:ALGT), Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes SA (ADR) (NYSE:GOL), SkyWest, Inc. (NASDAQ:SKYW), Republic Airways Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:RJET), and Era Group Inc (NYSE:ERA). This group of stocks are the members of the regional airlines industry and their market caps resemble HA’s market cap.

Using the results shown by our studies, regular investors should always keep one eye on hedge fund and insider trading sentiment, and Hawaiian Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:HA) is no exception.

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