Here is What Hedge Funds Think About ALLETE Inc (ALE)

Is it smart to be bullish on ALLETE Inc (NYSE:ALE)?

To the average investor, there are dozens of gauges shareholders can use to analyze publicly traded companies. A couple of the most useful are hedge fund and insider trading sentiment. At Insider Monkey, our studies have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the best fund managers can outclass their index-focused peers by a significant amount (see just how much).

Equally as useful, optimistic insider trading activity is another way to analyze the stock market universe. Just as you’d expect, there are a number of motivations for an insider to cut shares of his or her company, but only one, very clear reason why they would initiate a purchase. Several empirical studies have demonstrated the valuable potential of this method if investors know what to do (learn more here).

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s analyze the recent info for ALLETE Inc (NYSE:ALE).

What have hedge funds been doing with ALLETE Inc (NYSE:ALE)?

At Q2’s end, a total of 6 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of 0% from the first quarter. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of notable hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes significantly.

When using filings from the hedgies we track, Bernard Horn’s Polaris Capital Management had the biggest position in ALLETE Inc (NYSE:ALE), worth close to $53.3 million, comprising 3% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Adage Capital Management, managed by Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson, which held a $47.4 million position; 0.1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Some other peers that are bullish include Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and Israel Englander’s Millennium Management.

How are insiders trading ALLETE Inc (NYSE:ALE)?

Insider buying made by high-level executives is most useful when the company in question has seen transactions within the past six months. Over the last half-year time frame, ALLETE Inc (NYSE:ALE) has experienced zero unique insiders purchasing, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

We’ll also review the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to ALLETE Inc (NYSE:ALE). These stocks are MGE Energy, Inc. (NASDAQ:MGEE), Vectren Corporation (NYSE:VVC), NorthWestern Corp (NYSE:NWE), Avista Corp (NYSE:AVA), and PNM Resources, Inc. (NYSE:PNM). This group of stocks belong to the diversified utilities industry and their market caps are closest to ALE’s market cap.