Tennant Company (NYSE:TNC) was in 11 hedge funds’ portfolio at the end of March. TNC investors should be aware of a decrease in hedge fund interest lately. There were 12 hedge funds in our database with TNC positions at the end of the previous quarter.
If you’d ask most stock holders, hedge funds are seen as slow, outdated investment tools of yesteryear. While there are over 8000 funds trading at present, we at Insider Monkey hone in on the crème de la crème of this club, around 450 funds. It is widely believed that this group oversees most of the smart money’s total asset base, and by keeping an eye on their highest performing equity investments, we have come up with a number of investment strategies that have historically beaten Mr. 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 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 (check out a sample of our picks).
Equally as key, positive insider trading sentiment is a second way to break down the stock market universe. There are lots of stimuli for a corporate insider to sell shares of his or her company, but just one, very clear reason why they would buy. Plenty of academic studies have demonstrated the impressive potential of this tactic if shareholders understand what to do (learn more here).
Keeping this in mind, we’re going to take a look at the key action regarding Tennant Company (NYSE:TNC).
What does the smart money think about Tennant Company (NYSE:TNC)?
In preparation for this quarter, a total of 11 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of -8% from one quarter earlier. With hedge funds’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few noteworthy hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings meaningfully.
When looking at the hedgies we track, Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates had the most valuable position in Tennant Company (NYSE:TNC), worth close to $81.1 million, comprising 0.2% of its total 13F portfolio. On Royce & Associates’s heels is Mario Gabelli of GAMCO Investors, with a $23 million position; 0.1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Other peers that hold long positions include Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies, Drew Cupps’s Cupps Capital Management and Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital.
Judging by the fact that Tennant Company (NYSE:TNC) has faced declining sentiment from the aggregate hedge fund industry, it’s safe to say that there was a specific group of money managers who were dropping their entire stakes heading into Q2. At the top of the heap, John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors dropped the largest position of the “upper crust” of funds we track, valued at an estimated $1 million in stock.. Mike Vranos’s fund, Ellington, also sold off its stock, about $0.2 million worth. These transactions are intriguing to say the least, as aggregate hedge fund interest was cut by 1 funds heading into Q2.
What do corporate executives and insiders think about Tennant Company (NYSE:TNC)?
Bullish insider trading is particularly usable when the company in question has seen transactions within the past 180 days. Over the latest 180-day time period, Tennant Company (NYSE:TNC) has experienced zero unique insiders buying, and 4 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).
Let’s also review hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to Tennant Company (NYSE:TNC). These stocks are CECO Environmental Corp. (NASDAQ:CECE), ADA-ES, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADES), Heritage-Crystal Clean, Inc. (NASDAQ:HCCI), CLARCOR Inc. (NYSE:CLC), and Calgon Carbon Corporation (NYSE:CCC). This group of stocks are in the pollution & treatment controls industry and their market caps match TNC’s market cap.
