At the moment, there are a multitude of methods shareholders can use to monitor publicly traded companies. A pair of the most under-the-radar are hedge fund and insider trading interest. At Insider Monkey, our research analyses have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the best investment managers can beat their index-focused peers by a superb amount (see just how much).
Equally as beneficial, bullish insider trading sentiment is another way to parse down the investments you’re interested in. Just as you’d expect, there are lots of incentives for a bullish insider to drop shares of his or her company, but just one, very clear reason why they would initiate a purchase. Various academic studies have demonstrated the valuable potential of this tactic if piggybackers know where to look (learn more here).
With these “truths” under our belt, we’re going to take a gander at the latest action regarding SkyWest, Inc. (NASDAQ:SKYW).
What have hedge funds been doing with SkyWest, Inc. (NASDAQ:SKYW)?
In preparation for this quarter, a total of 12 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of 0% from one quarter earlier. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings meaningfully.
Of the funds we track, Jeffrey Vinik’s Vinik Asset Management had the most valuable position in SkyWest, Inc. (NASDAQ:SKYW), worth close to $21 million, accounting for 0.6% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Jim Simons of Renaissance Technologies, with a $6.7 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other hedgies that hold long positions include Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital, Joel Greenblatt’s Gotham Asset Management and Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management.
Seeing as SkyWest, Inc. (NASDAQ:SKYW) has faced falling interest from the aggregate hedge fund industry, logic holds that there lies a certain “tier” of hedgies who were dropping their positions entirely at the end of the first quarter. At the top of the heap, Charles Davidson’s Wexford Capital said goodbye to the largest position of the 450+ funds we key on, comprising an estimated $1 million in stock., and Mike Vranos of Ellington was right behind this move, as the fund dumped about $0.2 million worth. These moves are important to note, as aggregate hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).
What have insiders been doing with SkyWest, Inc. (NASDAQ:SKYW)?
Bullish insider trading is particularly usable when the company we’re looking at has seen transactions within the past half-year. Over the latest half-year time period, SkyWest, Inc. (NASDAQ:SKYW) has seen zero unique insiders buying, and 4 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).
Let’s go over hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to SkyWest, Inc. (NASDAQ:SKYW). These stocks are JetBlue Airways Corporation (NASDAQ:JBLU), Allegiant Travel Company (NASDAQ:ALGT), Era Group Inc (NYSE:ERA), Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes SA (ADR) (NYSE:GOL), and Republic Airways Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:RJET). This group of stocks are in the regional airlines industry and their market caps match SKYW’s market cap.
