Liberty Interactive (Interactive group) (NASDAQ:LINTA) is up 13.4% year-to-date, and one group of investors in increasing their exposure. We’re talking about hedge funds.
In the eyes of many of your fellow readers, hedge funds are perceived as overrated, old investment vehicles of a period lost to current times. Although there are over 8,000 hedge funds with their doors open today, Insider Monkey looks at the bigwigs of this group, close to 525 funds. Analysts calculate that this group oversees the lion’s share of the smart money’s total capital, and by paying attention to their highest quality equity investments, we’ve unearthed a few investment strategies that have historically outperformed Mr. Market. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outpaced 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 33 percentage points in 11 months (see all of our picks from August).
Just as useful, optimistic insider trading sentiment is another way to analyze the investments you’re interested in. Obviously, there are many incentives for an executive to sell shares of his or her company, but just one, very simple reason why they would behave bullishly. Plenty of empirical studies have demonstrated the useful potential of this method if you know where to look (learn more here).
Furthermore, let’s discuss the newest info for Liberty Interactive (Interactive group) (NASDAQ:LINTA).
What have hedge funds been doing with Liberty Interactive (Interactive group) (NASDAQ:LINTA)?
Heading into Q3, a total of 54 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of 6% from the previous quarter. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an “upper tier” of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings significantly.
Out of the hedge funds we follow, Harris Associates, managed by Natixis Global Asset Management, holds the biggest position in Liberty Interactive (Interactive group) (NASDAQ:LINTA). Harris Associates has a $505.3 million position in the stock, comprising 1.1% of its 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is FPR Partners, managed by Bob Peck and Andy Raab, which held a $252.1 million position; 10.3% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Remaining peers that are bullish include Barry Rosenstein’s JANA Partners, Murray Stahl’s Horizon Asset Management and Bob Peck and Andy Raab’s FPR Partners.
As industrywide interest increased, certain bigger names were leading the bulls’ herd. FPR Partners, managed by Bob Peck and Andy Raab, established the largest position in Liberty Interactive (Interactive group) (NASDAQ:LINTA). FPR Partners had 252.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Barry Rosenstein’s JANA Partners also made a $204.7 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Murray Stahl’s Horizon Asset Management, Bob Peck and Andy Raab’s FPR Partners, and Peter Adam Hochfelder’s Brahman Capital.
What do corporate executives and insiders think about Liberty Interactive (Interactive group) (NASDAQ:LINTA)?
Insider buying is at its handiest when the company in focus has seen transactions within the past 180 days. Over the last six-month time period, Liberty Interactive (Interactive group) (NASDAQ:LINTA) has seen zero unique insiders buying, and 6 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).
We’ll go over the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to Liberty Interactive (Interactive group) (NASDAQ:LINTA). These stocks are PC Connection, Inc. (NASDAQ:PCCC), Liquidity Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:LQDT), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY), and Mercadolibre Inc (NASDAQ:MELI). This group of stocks belong to the catalog & mail order houses industry and their market caps resemble LINTA’s market cap.
| Company Name | # of Hedge Funds | # of Insiders Buying | # of Insiders Selling |
| PC Connection, Inc. (NASDAQ:PCCC) | 7 | 0 | 4 |
| Liquidity Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:LQDT) | 12 | 1 | 5 |
| Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) | 69 | 0 | 12 |
| eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) | 81 | 1 | 9 |
| Mercadolibre Inc (NASDAQ:MELI) | 19 | 0 | 4 |
Using the results explained by the previously mentioned studies, average investors must always pay attention to hedge fund and insider trading sentiment, and Liberty Interactive (Interactive group) (NASDAQ:LINTA) is no exception.
