Bio-Reference Laboratories Inc (NASDAQ:BRLI) was in 11 hedge funds’ portfolio at the end of March. BRLI investors should be aware of a decrease in enthusiasm from smart money lately. There were 11 hedge funds in our database with BRLI holdings at the end of the previous quarter.
If you’d ask most traders, hedge funds are viewed as slow, outdated financial tools of years past. While there are over 8000 funds in operation at present, we hone in on the bigwigs of this club, close to 450 funds. It is widely believed that this group has its hands on the majority of all hedge funds’ total asset base, and by tracking their top stock picks, we have unsheathed a few investment strategies that have historically beaten the market. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outperformed the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points annually for a decade in our back tests, and since we’ve began to sharing our picks with our subscribers at the end of August 2012, we have trumped the S&P 500 index by 23.3 percentage points in 8 months (see all of our picks from August).
Just as key, positive insider trading activity is a second way to parse down the investments you’re interested in. There are a variety of reasons for an insider to drop shares of his or her company, but only one, very clear reason why they would buy. Many empirical studies have demonstrated the impressive potential of this tactic if piggybackers understand where to look (learn more here).
With all of this in mind, let’s take a glance at the recent action encompassing Bio-Reference Laboratories Inc (NASDAQ:BRLI).
How have hedgies been trading Bio-Reference Laboratories Inc (NASDAQ:BRLI)?
In preparation for this quarter, a total of 11 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of 0% from one quarter earlier. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes considerably.
Seeing as Bio-Reference Laboratories Inc (NASDAQ:BRLI) has witnessed a declination in interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, we can see that there was a specific group of funds that slashed their positions entirely at the end of the first quarter. Intriguingly, Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management said goodbye to the largest investment of the 450+ funds we track, worth about $10.7 million in call options, and Andrew Feldstein and Stephen Siderow of Blue Mountain Capital was right behind this move, as the fund dumped about $6.6 million worth. These moves are important to note, as aggregate hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).
How are insiders trading Bio-Reference Laboratories Inc (NASDAQ:BRLI)?
Insider trading activity, especially when it’s bullish, is most useful when the company in focus has seen transactions within the past six months. Over the latest half-year time period, Bio-Reference Laboratories Inc (NASDAQ:BRLI) has seen zero unique insiders purchasing, and 2 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).
Let’s also review hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to Bio-Reference Laboratories Inc (NASDAQ:BRLI). These stocks are Trius Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSRX), Novadaq Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:NVDQ), Nordion Inc (USA) (NYSE:NDZ), WuXi PharmaTech (Cayman) Inc. (ADR) (NYSE:WX), and Genomic Health, Inc. (NASDAQ:GHDX). This group of stocks are the members of the medical laboratories & research industry and their market caps are similar to BRLI’s market cap.
