Highlights Among Hedge Funds’ Latest Moves

At Insider Monkey we don’t only analyze the quarterly 13F filings of over 730 smart money investors, but we also track their day-to-day moves disclosed via other filings with the SEC. Among the latest hedge fund moves, Jeff Ubben‘s ValueAct Capital reported trimming its stake in Msci Inc (NYSE:MSCI), while James H. Litinsky‘s JHL Capital Group disclosed an increased stake in Unisys Corporation (NYSE:UIS). In another filing, billionaire activist Carl Icahn reported further increasing its stake in Cheniere Energy, Inc. (NYSEMKT:LNG). Let’s take a closer look at these three moves.

Why are we at all interested in the moves of a select group of investors? The reason is simple, through extensive research, we determined that imitating their activity can help retail investors outperform the market. Our strategy focuses on the 15 most popular small-cap picks among the funds we track and it has returned 102% since August 2012, compared to 49% for the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) (read more details here).

Activist fund ValueAct has been a long-term shareholder of Msci Inc (NYSE:MSCI) and in a recent 13F filing it disclosed selling some 1.83 million shares of the company, lowering its stake to 7.48 million shares. The shares have been sold in three transactions at an average price of $67.52 per unit and have lowered ValueAct’s stake in MSCI to 7.3% of the outstanding stock. According to its 13D filing, ValueAct reduced the stake as part of its “ongoing process of portfolio management”. The fund has a representative on Msci Inc (NYSE:MSCI)’s board of directors, D. Robert Hale, who will keep his position and plans to run for reelection at the company’s 2016 annual meeting of shareholders. MSCI’s stock has gained over 12% since the beginning of October and is up by over 38% year-to-date. Msci Inc (NYSE:MSCI) is not very popular among the funds we track, although during the second quarter, the number of funds bullish on the stock went up by eight to 24. Moreover, these investors amassed over 17% of the company’s outstanding stock at the end of June.

Let’s move on to Unisys Corporation (NYSE:UIS) and Cheniere Energy, Inc. (NYSEMKT:LNG), and take a look at JHL Capital and Carl Icahn’s latest move involving their stakes in the company.

Unisys Corporation (NYSE:UIS) is a $680 million global IT services company, whose stock has lost over 52% since the beginning of the year. In its latest 13D filing, JHL Capital reported ownership of 5.30 million shares of Unisys, which represent around 7% of the company’s outstanding stock. The new position is higher than the 5.00 million shares disclosed in JHL’s latest 13F filing. JHL also added 100,000 shares to its stake in Unisys during the second quarter. In its latest financial report, Unisys Corporation (NYSE:UIS) stated a net loss of $0.19 per share, surpassing the analyst estimate of a loss of $1.19 per share. JHL is one of the few investors from our database bullish on Unisys Corporation (NYSE:UIS). At the end of June, only 16 held shares of the company, down from 19 a quarter earlier. However, these funds amassed some 15.60% of the company’s outstanding stock.

Carl Icahn has initiated a stake in Cheniere Energy, Inc. (NYSEMKT:LNG) during the third quarter and has further boosted it in the last couple of months. In its latest Form 4, the billionaire activist reported buying another 1.0 million shares in three transactions at an average price of $45.46 apiece. Following the increase of his position, Icahn owns some 29.55 million shares of Cheniere Energy, Inc. (NYSEMKT:LNG), which represent some 12.52% of the company’s outstanding common stock. In this way, Icahn has considerably increased its stake, which amounted to just 1.08 million shares at the end of June. The stock is down by 33% since the beginning of the year, but smart money investors are bullish, as 76 funds from our database amassed nearly 55% of the company’s shares during the second quarter. At the same time, a big short-seller, Jim Chanos, who manages Kynikos Associates, has recently said that he is shorting Cheniere Energy, Inc. (NYSEMKT:LNG), calling the company a ““looming disaster“ (see more details).

Disclosure: none