Is Altra Holdings, Inc. (AIMC) Going to Burn These Hedge Funds?

Altra Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AIMC) shareholders have witnessed a decrease in enthusiasm from smart money in recent months.

In the eyes of most market participants, hedge funds are viewed as worthless, old financial vehicles of the past. While there are more than 8000 funds trading at present, we choose to focus on the bigwigs of this group, close to 450 funds. It is estimated that this group controls most of the hedge fund industry’s total asset base, and by tracking their highest performing investments, we have spotted a few investment strategies that have historically beaten Mr. Market. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy beat the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points annually for a decade in our back tests, and since we’ve started sharing our picks with our subscribers at the end of August 2012, we have trumped the S&P 500 index by 23.3 percentage points in 8 months (see the details here).

Equally as integral, positive insider trading activity is a second way to break down the stock market universe. As the old adage goes: there are lots of stimuli for a corporate insider to downsize shares of his or her company, but only one, very obvious reason why they would buy. Plenty of empirical studies have demonstrated the market-beating potential of this strategy if “monkeys” know where to look (learn more here).

Keeping this in mind, let’s take a peek at the key action encompassing Altra Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AIMC).

What have hedge funds been doing with Altra Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AIMC)?

Heading into Q2, a total of 8 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of -11% from the first quarter. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes substantially.

Of the funds we track, Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies had the biggest position in Altra Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AIMC), worth close to $3.6 million, comprising less than 0.1%% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Catapult Capital Management, managed by Israel Englander, which held a $2.5 million position; the fund has 0.5% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other hedgies with similar optimism include Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management, Joel Greenblatt’s Gotham Asset Management and Israel Englander’s Millennium Management.

Seeing as Altra Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AIMC) has experienced bearish sentiment from the aggregate hedge fund industry, we can see that there was a specific group of hedgies that decided to sell off their entire stakes at the end of the first quarter. At the top of the heap, Alexander Mitchell’s Scopus Asset Management dumped the largest investment of the “upper crust” of funds we watch, worth an estimated $0.6 million in stock.. D. E. Shaw’s fund, D E Shaw, also sold off its stock, about $0.5 million worth. These bearish behaviors are intriguing to say the least, as total hedge fund interest was cut by 1 funds at the end of the first quarter.

What do corporate executives and insiders think about Altra Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AIMC)?

Insider purchases made by high-level executives is at its handiest when the company in question has seen transactions within the past 180 days. Over the last six-month time frame, Altra Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AIMC) has seen zero unique insiders purchasing, and 3 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

Let’s go over hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to Altra Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AIMC). These stocks are OSI Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:OSIS), Daktronics, Inc. (NASDAQ:DAKT), GrafTech International Ltd (NYSE:GTI), Powell Industries, Inc. (NASDAQ:POWL), and Hollysys Automation Technologies Ltd (NASDAQ:HOLI). This group of stocks are the members of the industrial electrical equipment industry and their market caps are similar to AIMC’s market cap.

With the results demonstrated by our tactics, retail investors must always pay attention to hedge fund and insider trading activity, and Altra Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AIMC) is an important part of this process.

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