Piedmont Office Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE:PDM) shareholders have witnessed an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers in recent months.
According to most market participants, hedge funds are assumed to be slow, outdated financial tools of the past. While there are more than 8000 funds in operation today, we at Insider Monkey look at the moguls of this group, around 450 funds. It is estimated that this group oversees the lion’s share of all hedge funds’ total capital, and by paying attention to their top picks, we have uncovered a number of investment strategies that have historically outperformed the broader indices. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy beat 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 outclassed the S&P 500 index by 23.3 percentage points in 8 months (see all of our picks from August).
Just as beneficial, positive insider trading sentiment is a second way to parse down the investments you’re interested in. Just as you’d expect, there are lots of motivations for an executive to cut shares of his or her company, but just one, very simple reason why they would behave bullishly. Various empirical studies have demonstrated the valuable potential of this strategy if you understand what to do (learn more here).
Keeping this in mind, we’re going to take a glance at the key action encompassing Piedmont Office Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE:PDM).
How are hedge funds trading Piedmont Office Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE:PDM)?
In preparation for this quarter, a total of 7 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of 17% from one quarter earlier. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings substantially.
Of the funds we track, Arrowstreet Capital, managed by Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell, holds the largest position in Piedmont Office Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE:PDM). Arrowstreet Capital has a $23.2 million position in the stock, comprising 0.2% of its 13F portfolio. On Arrowstreet Capital’s heels is AEW Capital Management, managed by Jeffrey Furber, which held a $22.6 million position; 0.6% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Some other peers that hold long positions include Israel Englander’s Millennium Management, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw.
As one would reasonably expect, specific money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Arrowstreet Capital, managed by Peter Rathjens Bruce Clarke and John Campbell, created the most outsized position in Piedmont Office Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE:PDM). Arrowstreet Capital had 23.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Matthew Tewksbury’s Stevens Capital Management also initiated a $2.3 million position during the quarter.
What have insiders been doing with Piedmont Office Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE:PDM)?
Insider purchases made by high-level executives is best served when the company in focus has seen transactions within the past 180 days. Over the latest 180-day time frame, Piedmont Office Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE:PDM) has seen 1 unique insiders buying, and zero 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 Piedmont Office Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE:PDM). These stocks are Mack Cali Realty Corp (NYSE:CLI), Brookfield Canada Office Properties (NYSE:BOXC), CommonWealth REIT (NYSE:CWH), Kilroy Realty Corp (NYSE:KRC), and Highwoods Properties Inc (NYSE:HIW). This group of stocks belong to the reit – office industry and their market caps resemble PDM’s market cap.