Mantech International Corp (NASDAQ:MANT) investors should be aware of a decrease in support from the world’s most elite money managers of late.
According to most traders, hedge funds are seen as slow, old investment tools of yesteryear. While there are more than 8000 funds with their doors open at present, we choose to focus on the elite of this group, close to 450 funds. It is widely believed that this group has its hands on most of the smart money’s total capital, and by tracking their best investments, we have found a number of investment strategies that have historically beaten the market. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outpaced the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points a 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 25 percentage points in 6.5 month (explore the details and some picks here).
Equally as key, positive insider trading sentiment is a second way to parse down the marketplace. Obviously, there are a variety of incentives for an executive to get rid of shares of his or her company, but just one, very obvious reason why they would buy. Several empirical studies have demonstrated the impressive potential of this strategy if investors know where to look (learn more here).
With all of this in mind, we’re going to take a peek at the key action encompassing Mantech International Corp (NASDAQ:MANT).
How have hedgies been trading Mantech International Corp (NASDAQ:MANT)?
In preparation for this year, a total of 11 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of 0% from one quarter earlier. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings considerably.
According to our comprehensive database, Royce & Associates, managed by Chuck Royce, holds the biggest position in Mantech International Corp (NASDAQ:MANT). Royce & Associates has a $93 million position in the stock, comprising 0.3% of its 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Third Avenue Management, managed by Martin Whitman, which held a $41 million position; 0.1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Remaining hedge funds that hold long positions include David Abrams’s Abrams Capital Management, Joel Greenblatt’s Gotham Asset Management and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group.
Because Mantech International Corp (NASDAQ:MANT) has experienced a declination in interest from the smart money, it’s easy to see that there was a specific group of funds that elected to cut their full holdings last quarter. Intriguingly, Mark Travis’s Intrepid Capital Management said goodbye to the biggest stake of the “upper crust” of funds we key on, comprising an estimated $31 million in stock. These transactions are important to note, as aggregate hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).
How are insiders trading Mantech International Corp (NASDAQ:MANT)?
Bullish insider trading is particularly usable when the primary stock in question has seen transactions within the past six months. Over the last 180-day time frame, Mantech International Corp (NASDAQ:MANT) has seen zero unique insiders buying, and 2 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 Mantech International Corp (NASDAQ:MANT). These stocks are Intralinks Holdings Inc (NYSE:IL), Sourcefire, Inc. (NASDAQ:FIRE), Brady Corp (NYSE:BRC), KEYW Holding Corp. (NASDAQ:KEYW), and AsiaInfo-Linkage, Inc. (NASDAQ:ASIA). This group of stocks belong to the security software & services industry and their market caps resemble MANT’s market cap.
| Company Name | # of Hedge Funds | # of Insiders Buying | # of Insiders Selling |
| Intralinks Holdings Inc (NYSE:IL) | 15 | 0 | 0 |
| Sourcefire, Inc. (NASDAQ:FIRE) | 14 | 0 | 9 |
| Brady Corp (NYSE:BRC) | 13 | 0 | 9 |
| KEYW Holding Corp. (NASDAQ:KEYW) | 4 | 0 | 2 |
| AsiaInfo-Linkage, Inc. (NASDAQ:ASIA) | 9 | 0 | 0 |
With the results shown by Insider Monkey’s studies, retail investors must always monitor hedge fund and insider trading sentiment, and Mantech International Corp (NASDAQ:MANT) is an important part of this process.
