Here is What Hedge Funds Think About SJW Corp. (SJW)

Is SJW Corp. (NYSE:SJW) a healthy stock for your portfolio? Investors who are in the know are buying. The number of long hedge fund positions went up by 3 recently.

In today’s marketplace, there are many gauges shareholders can use to track their holdings. A couple of the most underrated are hedge fund and insider trading movement. At Insider Monkey, our studies have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the top investment managers can outperform their index-focused peers by a very impressive amount (see just how much).

Equally as beneficial, positive insider trading activity is a second way to parse down the financial markets. As the old adage goes: there are a number of incentives for a bullish insider to downsize shares of his or her company, but just one, very clear reason why they would buy. Various empirical studies have demonstrated the market-beating potential of this tactic if you understand where to look (learn more here).

With these “truths” under our belt, let’s take a glance at the latest action regarding SJW Corp. (NYSE:SJW).

Hedge fund activity in SJW Corp. (NYSE:SJW)

Heading into Q2, a total of 7 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of 75% from the previous quarter. With hedgies’ capital changing hands, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes considerably.

When looking at the hedgies we track, Mario Gabelli’s GAMCO Investors had the most valuable position in SJW Corp. (NYSE:SJW), worth close to $11.3 million, comprising 0.1% of its total 13F portfolio. On GAMCO Investors’s heels is Royce & Associates, managed by Chuck Royce, which held a $10.6 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other hedge funds that are bullish include John I. Dickerson’s Summit Global Management, Roger Keith Long’s Otter Creek Management and John Murphy’s Alydar Capital.

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, key hedge funds have jumped into SJW Corp. (NYSE:SJW) headfirst. Alydar Capital, managed by John Murphy, assembled the most outsized position in SJW Corp. (NYSE:SJW). Alydar Capital had 1.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp also initiated a $0.9 million position during the quarter. The only other fund with a new position in the stock is Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management.

Insider trading activity in SJW Corp. (NYSE:SJW)

Bullish insider trading is most useful when the company we’re looking at has seen transactions within the past 180 days. Over the latest six-month time frame, SJW Corp. (NYSE:SJW) has seen zero unique insiders buying, and 1 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 SJW Corp. (NYSE:SJW). These stocks are American States Water Co (NYSE:AWR), The York Water Company (NASDAQ:YORW), California Water Service Group (NYSE:CWT), Middlesex Water Company (NASDAQ:MSEX), and Connecticut Water Service, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTWS). This group of stocks are in the water utilities industry and their market caps resemble SJW’s market cap.