Intersil Corp (ISIL): Hedge Funds Are Bullish and Insiders Are Bearish, What Should You Do?

Intersil Corp (NASDAQ:ISIL) investors should pay attention to an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers in recent months.

In the eyes of most market participants, hedge funds are viewed as worthless, outdated investment tools of yesteryear. While there are greater than 8000 funds trading at the moment, we at Insider Monkey choose to focus on the bigwigs of this club, about 450 funds. It is estimated that this group oversees the majority of the smart money’s total asset base, and by monitoring their best equity investments, we have figured out a few investment strategies that have historically outstripped the S&P 500 index. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy beat the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points per year 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 key, positive insider trading activity is a second way to parse down the world of equities. There are plenty of stimuli for an executive to cut shares of his or her company, but only one, very clear reason why they would initiate a purchase. Many empirical studies have demonstrated the impressive potential of this strategy if you understand where to look (learn more here).

Keeping this in mind, we’re going to take a peek at the latest action encompassing Intersil Corp (NASDAQ:ISIL).

How are hedge funds trading Intersil Corp (NASDAQ:ISIL)?

At Q1’s end, a total of 11 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of 10% from the previous quarter. With hedgies’ capital changing hands, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes considerably.

Of the funds we track, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group had the largest position in Intersil Corp (NASDAQ:ISIL), worth close to $11.3 million, accounting for less than 0.1%% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Jim Simons of Renaissance Technologies, with a $10.6 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other hedge funds that hold long positions include Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management and Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management.

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, key money managers were breaking ground themselves. SAC Capital Advisors, managed by Steven Cohen, established the largest position in Intersil Corp (NASDAQ:ISIL). SAC Capital Advisors had 0.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Glenn Russell Dubin’s Highbridge Capital Management also initiated a $0.7 million position during the quarter. The only other fund with a brand new ISIL position is Matthew Tewksbury’s Stevens Capital Management.

Insider trading activity in Intersil Corp (NASDAQ:ISIL)

Insider buying is particularly usable when the company in question has experienced transactions within the past six months. Over the latest half-year time frame, Intersil Corp (NASDAQ:ISIL) has experienced zero unique insiders purchasing, and 1 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

Let’s also examine hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to Intersil Corp (NASDAQ:ISIL). These stocks are Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NYSE:AMD), M/A-COM Technology Solutions Holdings (NASDAQ:MTSI), Cypress Semiconductor Corporation (NASDAQ:CY), Spreadtrum Communications, Inc (ADR) (NASDAQ:SPRD), and Integrated Device Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:IDTI). This group of stocks are the members of the semiconductor – broad line industry and their market caps are similar to ISIL’s market cap.