Hedge Funds Are Selling Teekay LNG Partners L.P. (TGP)

Teekay LNG Partners L.P. (NYSE:TGP) has experienced a decrease in support from the world’s most elite money managers in recent months.

To most traders, hedge funds are viewed as slow, outdated investment tools of years past. While there are more than 8000 funds trading at present, we at Insider Monkey choose to focus on the masters of this club, close to 450 funds. It is estimated that this group has its hands on most of the hedge fund industry’s total capital, and by monitoring their top stock picks, we have identified a number of investment strategies that have historically outpaced the broader indices. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outpaced the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points per year 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 outperformed the S&P 500 index by 23.3 percentage points in 8 months (see the details here).

Just as key, positive insider trading activity is a second way to parse down the world of equities. Just as you’d expect, there are a variety of stimuli for a corporate insider to sell shares of his or her company, but just one, very clear reason why they would buy. Various empirical studies have demonstrated the valuable potential of this method if you understand what to do (learn more here).

Now, it’s important to take a gander at the key action regarding Teekay LNG Partners L.P. (NYSE:TGP).

How are hedge funds trading Teekay LNG Partners L.P. (NYSE:TGP)?

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 6 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of 0% from the first quarter. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of notable hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes meaningfully.

Of the funds we track, Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management had the largest call position in Teekay LNG Partners L.P. (NYSE:TGP), worth close to $4.8 million, accounting for less than 0.1%% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Renaissance Technologies, managed by Jim Simons, which held a $1.3 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other hedge funds with similar optimism include Leon Cooperman’s Omega Advisors, and John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors.

Due to the fact that Teekay LNG Partners L.P. (NYSE:TGP) has faced falling interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s safe to say that there exists a select few fund managers who sold off their full holdings heading into Q2. Intriguingly, Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management sold off the biggest position of the “upper crust” of funds we monitor, worth about $0.5 million in stock., and Israel Englander of Millennium Management was right behind this move, as the fund dumped about $0.4 million worth. These moves are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).

What have insiders been doing with Teekay LNG Partners L.P. (NYSE:TGP)?

Insider purchases made by high-level executives is particularly usable when the company we’re looking at has experienced transactions within the past half-year. Over the latest six-month time frame, Teekay LNG Partners L.P. (NYSE:TGP) has seen 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 Teekay LNG Partners L.P. (NYSE:TGP). These stocks are Kirby Corporation (NYSE:KEX), Teekay Offshore Partners L.P. (NYSE:TOO), Teekay Corporation (NYSE:TK), Tidewater Inc. (NYSE:TDW), and Golar LNG Limited (USA) (NASDAQ:GLNG). This group of stocks belong to the shipping industry and their market caps are similar to TGP’s market cap.

With the returns shown by our time-tested strategies, everyday investors should always monitor hedge fund and insider trading sentiment, and Teekay LNG Partners L.P. (NYSE:TGP) shareholders fit into this picture quite nicely.

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