If you were to ask many of your peers, hedge funds are assumed to be bloated, old financial tools of a period lost to current times. Although there are over 8,000 hedge funds with their doors open currently, Insider Monkey aim at the crème de la crème of this club, about 525 funds. It is widely held that this group controls the majority of the hedge fund industry’s total assets, and by monitoring their highest quality investments, we’ve brought to light a number of investment strategies that have historically outpaced Mr. Market. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outpaced the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points annually 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 outpaced the S&P 500 index by 33 percentage points in 11 months (find a sample of our picks).
Equally as useful, positive insider trading activity is a second way to analyze the financial markets. Just as you’d expect, there are many reasons for a corporate insider to sell shares of his or her company, but only one, very simple reason why they would initiate a purchase. Many academic studies have demonstrated the impressive potential of this tactic if investors know what to do (learn more here).
Furthermore, we’re going to study the latest info for ABM Industries, Inc. (NYSE:ABM).
Hedge fund activity in ABM Industries, Inc. (NYSE:ABM)
In preparation for the third quarter, a total of 10 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of 11% from the previous quarter. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings considerably.
Out of the hedge funds we follow, Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates had the most valuable position in ABM Industries, Inc. (NYSE:ABM), worth close to $27.7 million, comprising 0.1% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Martin Whitman of Third Avenue Management, with a $25.2 million position; 0.5% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Some other hedge funds that hold long positions include David Dreman’s Dreman Value Management, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and Israel Englander’s Millennium Management.
With a general bullishness amongst the titans, particular hedge funds have been driving this bullishness. Royce & Associates, managed by Chuck Royce, assembled the most valuable position in ABM Industries, Inc. (NYSE:ABM). Royce & Associates had 27.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Martin Whitman’s Third Avenue Management also made a $25.2 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new ABM positions are David Dreman’s Dreman Value Management, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, and Israel Englander’s Millennium Management.
How are insiders trading ABM Industries, Inc. (NYSE:ABM)?
Bullish insider trading is best served when the company in focus has experienced transactions within the past 180 days. Over the latest half-year time period, ABM Industries, Inc. (NYSE:ABM) has seen zero unique insiders buying, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).
We’ll also review the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to ABM Industries, Inc. (NYSE:ABM). These stocks are Quad/Graphics, Inc. (NYSE:QUAD), Atlas Resource Partners, L.P. (NYSE:ARP), Interval Leisure Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:IILG), Cardtronics, Inc. (NASDAQ:CATM), and Heartland Payment Systems, Inc. (NYSE:HPY). All of these stocks are in the business services industry and their market caps are similar to ABM’s market cap.
| Company Name | # of Hedge Funds | # of Insiders Buying | # of Insiders Selling |
| Quad/Graphics, Inc. (NYSE:QUAD) | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| Atlas Resource Partners, L.P. (NYSE:ARP) | 12 | 0 | 0 |
| Interval Leisure Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:IILG) | 15 | 0 | 0 |
| Cardtronics, Inc. (NASDAQ:CATM) | 12 | 0 | 0 |
| Heartland Payment Systems, Inc. (NYSE:HPY) | 11 | 0 | 0 |
Using the results explained by Insider Monkey’s research, average investors must always pay attention to hedge fund and insider trading sentiment, and ABM Industries, Inc. (NYSE:ABM) applies perfectly to this mantra.
