Hedge Funds Are Selling Diana Shipping Inc. (DSX)

Diana Shipping Inc. (NYSE:DSX) investors should pay attention to a decrease in hedge fund interest recently.

In the financial world, there are a multitude of gauges market participants can use to track stocks. Two of the most underrated are hedge fund and insider trading sentiment. At Insider Monkey, our studies have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the top investment managers can trounce their index-focused peers by a superb amount (see just how much).

Equally as integral, bullish insider trading activity is another way to parse down the world of equities. Just as you’d expect, there are lots of motivations for an insider to cut shares of his or her company, but only one, very obvious reason why they would behave bullishly. Plenty of empirical studies have demonstrated the useful potential of this method if you know where to look (learn more here).

With all of this in mind, we’re going to take a look at the recent action surrounding Diana Shipping Inc. (NYSE:DSX).

How are hedge funds trading Diana Shipping Inc. (NYSE:DSX)?

In preparation for this year, a total of 9 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of -18% from the previous quarter. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes meaningfully.

Of the funds we track, Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies had the most valuable position in Diana Shipping Inc. (NYSE:DSX), worth close to $11 million, comprising less than 0.1%% of its total 13F portfolio. On Renaissance Technologies’s heels is Chuck Royce of Royce & Associates, with a $6.7 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 David Costen Haley’s HBK Investments, Van Schreiber’s Bennett Lawrence Management and John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors.

Since Diana Shipping Inc. (NYSE:DSX) has witnessed bearish sentiment from the smart money, logic holds that there exists a select few hedge funds that slashed their entire stakes in Q4. Interestingly, John Fichthorn’s Dialectic Capital Management cut the biggest position of all the hedgies we monitor, comprising close to $1.4 million in stock.. D. E. Shaw’s fund, D E Shaw, also cut its stock, about $0.8 million worth. These moves are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest fell by 2 funds in Q4.

What have insiders been doing with Diana Shipping Inc. (NYSE:DSX)?

Insider purchases made by high-level executives is particularly usable when the company in focus has seen transactions within the past 180 days. Over the last 180-day time period, Diana Shipping Inc. (NYSE:DSX) has experienced zero unique insiders purchasing, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

Let’s also review hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to Diana Shipping Inc. (NYSE:DSX). These stocks are Capital Product Partners L.P. (NASDAQ:CPLP), Alexander & Baldwin Holdings Inc (NYSE:MATX), GasLog Ltd (NYSE:GLOG), DryShips Inc. (NASDAQ:DRYS), and Navios Maritime Partners L.P. (NYSE:NMM). This group of stocks are the members of the shipping industry and their market caps match DSX’s market cap.

With the results shown by our research, everyday investors should always monitor hedge fund and insider trading activity, and Diana Shipping Inc. (NYSE:DSX) shareholders fit into this picture quite nicely.

Click here to learn why you should track hedge funds