Urstadt Biddle Properties Inc (NYSE:UBA) investors should pay attention to a decrease in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds lately.
If you’d ask most shareholders, hedge funds are viewed as slow, old investment vehicles of yesteryear. While there are more than 8000 funds in operation at the moment, we choose to focus on the elite of this group, around 450 funds. It is widely believed that this group controls the lion’s share of the hedge fund industry’s total capital, and by paying attention to their best picks, we have unsheathed a number of investment strategies that have historically outpaced the S&P 500 index. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy beat the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points per annum 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 topped the S&P 500 index by 23.3 percentage points in 8 months (explore the details and some picks here).
Equally as important, positive insider trading sentiment is another way to break down the financial markets. As the old adage goes: there are many stimuli for an executive to get rid of shares of his or her company, but just one, very obvious reason why they would initiate a purchase. Several academic studies have demonstrated the market-beating potential of this tactic if piggybackers know where to look (learn more here).
Now, we’re going to take a look at the key action regarding Urstadt Biddle Properties Inc (NYSE:UBA).
Hedge fund activity in Urstadt Biddle Properties Inc (NYSE:UBA)
In preparation for this quarter, a total of 5 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of -17% from the previous quarter. With hedgies’ capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of notable hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings considerably.
When looking at the hedgies we track, Forward Management, managed by J. Alan Reid, Jr., holds the most valuable position in Urstadt Biddle Properties Inc (NYSE:UBA). Forward Management has a $4.4 million position in the stock, comprising 0.3% of its 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Renaissance Technologies, managed by Jim Simons, which held a $2.8 million position; less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Some other hedge funds that are bullish include Richard Chilton’s Chilton Investment Company, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management and Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management.
Because Urstadt Biddle Properties Inc (NYSE:UBA) has faced bearish sentiment from the smart money, logic holds that there is a sect of money managers who sold off their entire stakes at the end of the first quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Murray Stahl’s Horizon Asset Management dumped the biggest investment of the 450+ funds we watch, totaling close to $1.7 million in stock., and John Overdeck and David Siegel of Two Sigma Advisors was right behind this move, as the fund dumped about $0.3 million worth. These moves are interesting, as total hedge fund interest fell by 1 funds at the end of the first quarter.
What do corporate executives and insiders think about Urstadt Biddle Properties Inc (NYSE:UBA)?
Insider purchases made by high-level executives is most useful when the company in focus has seen transactions within the past six months. Over the latest 180-day time period, Urstadt Biddle Properties Inc (NYSE:UBA) has experienced zero unique insiders purchasing, and 1 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).
Let’s also take a look at hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to Urstadt Biddle Properties Inc (NYSE:UBA). These stocks are Kite Realty Group Trust (NYSE:KRG), Inland Real Estate Corporation (NYSE:IRC), Saul Centers Inc (NYSE:BFS), Retail Opportunity Investments Corp (NASDAQ:ROIC), and Getty Realty Corp. (NYSE:GTY). This group of stocks belong to the reit – retail industry and their market caps match UBA’s market cap.
