Here is What Hedge Funds Think About Thoratec Corporation (THOR)

Is Thoratec Corporation (NASDAQ:THOR) worth your attention right now? The best stock pickers are taking a bullish view. The number of bullish hedge fund bets moved up by 3 lately.

In the eyes of most shareholders, hedge funds are seen as slow, outdated financial tools of yesteryear. While there are over 8000 funds trading at present, we hone in on the upper echelon of this group, close to 450 funds. It is widely believed that this group oversees most of all hedge funds’ total asset base, and by paying attention to their top equity investments, we have come up with 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 annum 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 beaten the S&P 500 index by 23.3 percentage points in 8 months (see all of our picks from August).

Equally as integral, positive insider trading sentiment is a second way to break down the financial markets. Obviously, there are a variety of stimuli for an insider to drop shares of his or her company, but only one, very clear reason why they would initiate a purchase. Various academic studies have demonstrated the valuable potential of this strategy if you know where to look (learn more here).

With all of this in mind, it’s important to take a glance at the latest action encompassing Thoratec Corporation (NASDAQ:THOR).

What have hedge funds been doing with Thoratec Corporation (NASDAQ:THOR)?

At Q1’s end, a total of 23 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of 15% from the previous quarter. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes meaningfully.

Of the funds we track, Eric Bannasch’s Cadian Capital had the biggest position in Thoratec Corporation (NASDAQ:THOR), worth close to $99.4 million, comprising 2.8% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Ken Griffin of Citadel Investment Group, with a $69.1 million position; 0.1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Other hedgies with similar optimism include Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies, Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates and Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management.

As aggregate interest increased, key money managers have jumped into Thoratec Corporation (NASDAQ:THOR) headfirst. Xerion, managed by Daniel Arbess, initiated the biggest call position in Thoratec Corporation (NASDAQ:THOR). Xerion had 8.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors also initiated a $6 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new THOR positions are Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management, Daniel Arbess’s Xerion, and Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital.

Insider trading activity in Thoratec Corporation (NASDAQ:THOR)

Insider purchases made by high-level executives is particularly usable when the primary stock in question has seen transactions within the past half-year. Over the latest 180-day time frame, Thoratec Corporation (NASDAQ:THOR) has seen zero unique insiders purchasing, and 7 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

Let’s go over hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to Thoratec Corporation (NASDAQ:THOR). These stocks are Insulet Corporation (NASDAQ:PODD), HeartWare International Inc (NASDAQ:HTWR), West Pharmaceutical Services Inc. (NYSE:WST), Hill-Rom Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:HRC), and Haemonetics Corporation (NYSE:HAE). This group of stocks are in the medical instruments & supplies industry and their market caps match THOR’s market cap.

With the returns exhibited by Insider Monkey’s time-tested strategies, retail investors must always watch hedge fund and insider trading sentiment, and Thoratec Corporation (NASDAQ:THOR) applies perfectly to this mantra.

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