Haverty Furniture Companies, Inc. (NYSE:HVT) was in 10 hedge funds’ portfolio at the end of March. HVT has experienced an increase in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds in recent months. There were 9 hedge funds in our database with HVT positions at the end of the previous quarter.
If you’d ask most market participants, hedge funds are assumed to be unimportant, outdated investment tools of yesteryear. While there are more than 8000 funds with their doors open at the moment, we at Insider Monkey choose to focus on the moguls of this group, close to 450 funds. Most estimates calculate that this group oversees the majority of the hedge fund industry’s total asset base, and by paying attention to their top picks, we have revealed a number of investment strategies that have historically outpaced the broader indices. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy beat the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points a year 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 outpaced the S&P 500 index by 23.3 percentage points in 8 months (explore the details and some picks here).
Equally as integral, bullish insider trading sentiment is a second way to parse down the marketplace. There are plenty of motivations for an upper level exec to sell shares of his or her company, but only one, very simple reason why they would initiate a purchase. Plenty of academic studies have demonstrated the valuable potential of this strategy if you know what to do (learn more here).
Consequently, it’s important to take a gander at the latest action encompassing Haverty Furniture Companies, Inc. (NYSE:HVT).
Hedge fund activity in Haverty Furniture Companies, Inc. (NYSE:HVT)
At Q1’s end, a total of 10 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of 11% from one quarter earlier. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes considerably.
When looking at the hedgies we track, Royce & Associates, managed by Chuck Royce, holds the most valuable position in Haverty Furniture Companies, Inc. (NYSE:HVT). Royce & Associates has a $8.2 million position in the stock, comprising less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Renaissance Technologies, managed by Jim Simons, which held a $6.3 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other hedgies that are bullish include Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw and Joel Greenblatt’s Gotham Asset Management.
Consequently, key hedge funds have been driving this bullishness. Gotham Asset Management, managed by Joel Greenblatt, assembled the most outsized position in Haverty Furniture Companies, Inc. (NYSE:HVT). Gotham Asset Management had 0.9 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital also initiated a $0.4 million position during the quarter. The only other fund with a brand new HVT position is Peter Algert and Kevin Coldiron’s Algert Coldiron Investors.
How have insiders been trading Haverty Furniture Companies, Inc. (NYSE:HVT)?
Insider buying is particularly usable when the company we’re looking at has experienced transactions within the past six months. Over the last half-year time period, Haverty Furniture Companies, Inc. (NYSE:HVT) has seen zero unique insiders buying, and 12 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).
Let’s also take a look at hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to Haverty Furniture Companies, Inc. (NYSE:HVT). These stocks are Williams-Sonoma, Inc. (NYSE:WSM), Pier 1 Imports, Inc. (NYSE:PIR), Restoration Hardware Holdings Inc (NYSE:RH), Kirkland’s, Inc. (NASDAQ:KIRK), and Gordmans Stores, Inc. (NASDAQ:GMAN). All of these stocks are in the home furnishing stores industry and their market caps resemble HVT’s market cap.
