Hedge Funds Aren’t Crazy About The Advisory Board Company (ABCO) Anymore

Is The Advisory Board Company (NASDAQ:ABCO) worth your attention right now? Investors who are in the know are selling. The number of long hedge fund positions decreased by 1 recently.

At the moment, there are a multitude of gauges investors can use to track the equity markets. A duo of the most underrated are hedge fund and insider trading activity. At Insider Monkey, our research analyses have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the top investment managers can outperform the broader indices by a superb margin (see just how much).

Equally as important, bullish insider trading sentiment is another way to break down the financial markets. Obviously, there are plenty of incentives for a corporate insider to get rid of shares of his or her company, but just one, very simple reason why they would buy. Several empirical studies have demonstrated the useful potential of this method if you know what to do (learn more here).

Keeping this in mind, we’re going to take a glance at the key action encompassing The Advisory Board Company (NASDAQ:ABCO).

How are hedge funds trading The Advisory Board Company (NASDAQ:ABCO)?

At Q1’s end, a total of 9 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of -10% from the previous quarter. With hedge funds’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few noteworthy hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes substantially.

Of the funds we track, Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates had the largest position in The Advisory Board Company (NASDAQ:ABCO), worth close to $61.6 million, accounting for 0.2% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Ken Griffin of Citadel Investment Group, with a $9.1 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other hedgies that hold long positions include Israel Englander’s Millennium Management, D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw and Mike Vranos’s Ellington.

Due to the fact that The Advisory Board Company (NASDAQ:ABCO) has faced bearish sentiment from the aggregate hedge fund industry, we can see that there was a specific group of money managers that decided to sell off their entire stakes in Q1. Intriguingly, Brian Bares’s Bares Capital Management sold off the biggest position of the 450+ funds we watch, valued at an estimated $5.4 million in stock.. Steven Cohen’s fund, SAC Capital Advisors, also said goodbye to its stock, about $0.6 million worth. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as total hedge fund interest dropped by 1 funds in Q1.

What have insiders been doing with The Advisory Board Company (NASDAQ:ABCO)?

Insider purchases made by high-level executives is at its handiest when the primary stock in question has experienced transactions within the past six months. Over the latest half-year time period, The Advisory Board Company (NASDAQ:ABCO) has experienced zero unique insiders buying, and 11 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

Let’s also review hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to The Advisory Board Company (NASDAQ:ABCO). These stocks are Portfolio Recovery Associates, Inc. (NASDAQ:PRAA), Deluxe Corporation (NYSE:DLX), Fair Isaac Corporation (NYSE:FICO), Healthcare Services Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:HCSG), and Zillow Inc (NASDAQ:Z). All of these stocks are in the business services industry and their market caps match ABCO’s market cap.