Myriad Genetics, Inc. (NASDAQ:MYGN) was in 19 hedge funds’ portfolio at the end of March. MYGN has experienced a decrease in enthusiasm from smart money in recent months. There were 21 hedge funds in our database with MYGN holdings at the end of the previous quarter.
If you’d ask most market participants, hedge funds are perceived as unimportant, old investment tools of yesteryear. While there are greater than 8000 funds in operation today, we at Insider Monkey hone in on the bigwigs of this club, close to 450 funds. It is widely believed that this group controls most of the hedge fund industry’s total capital, and by keeping an eye on their best picks, we have found a number of investment strategies that have historically outperformed the S&P 500 index. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outpaced 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 beaten the S&P 500 index by 23.3 percentage points in 8 months (explore the details and some picks here).
Just as integral, bullish insider trading sentiment is a second way to break down the investments you’re interested in. There are plenty of reasons for a corporate insider to drop shares of his or her company, but just one, very simple reason why they would initiate a purchase. Many empirical studies have demonstrated the market-beating potential of this method if “monkeys” know what to do (learn more here).
With all of this in mind, we’re going to take a peek at the key action regarding Myriad Genetics, Inc. (NASDAQ:MYGN).
How are hedge funds trading Myriad Genetics, Inc. (NASDAQ:MYGN)?
At the end of the first quarter, a total of 19 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of -10% from the first quarter. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings considerably.
Seeing as Myriad Genetics, Inc. (NASDAQ:MYGN) has experienced declining sentiment from the aggregate hedge fund industry, it’s safe to say that there lies a certain “tier” of funds that elected to cut their entire stakes in Q1. At the top of the heap, Donald Chiboucis’s Columbus Circle Investors dumped the biggest position of all the hedgies we track, comprising an estimated $17.6 million in stock, and Robert B. Gillam of McKinley Capital Management was right behind this move, as the fund cut about $3.1 million worth. These moves are important to note, as total hedge fund interest fell by 2 funds in Q1.
Insider trading activity in Myriad Genetics, Inc. (NASDAQ:MYGN)
Insider buying is most useful when the primary stock in question has seen transactions within the past six months. Over the latest 180-day time frame, Myriad Genetics, Inc. (NASDAQ:MYGN) has seen zero unique insiders purchasing, and 8 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).
With the results exhibited by our research, retail investors must always pay attention to hedge fund and insider trading sentiment, and Myriad Genetics, Inc. (NASDAQ:MYGN) shareholders fit into this picture quite nicely.
