Is Pitney Bowes Inc. (PBI) Going to Burn These Hedge Funds?

Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE:PBI) investors: listen up.

If you were to ask many traders, hedge funds are perceived as delayed, old investment vehicles of a forgotten age. Although there are In excess of 8,000 hedge funds with their doors open currently, Insider Monkey looks at the upper echelon of this group, about 525 funds. It is widely held that this group oversees the majority of the hedge fund industry’s total assets, and by tracking their highest performing picks, we’ve unearthed a few investment strategies that have historically outstripped the market. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outperformed the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points per 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 outclassed the S&P 500 index by 33 percentage points in 11 months (see all of our picks from August).

Equally as crucial, bullish insider trading activity is a second way to look at the world of equities. As the old adage goes: there are plenty of reasons for an upper level exec to get rid of shares of his or her company, but just one, very clear reason why they would behave bullishly. Plenty of academic studies have demonstrated the impressive potential of this method if investors understand what to do (learn more here).

Now that that’s out of the way, we’re going to examine the latest info for Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE:PBI).

How have hedgies been trading Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE:PBI)?

Heading into Q3, a total of 24 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of 9% from the previous quarter. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an “upper tier” of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings significantly.

Out of the hedge funds we follow, Columbus Circle Investors, managed by Donald Chiboucis, holds the largest position in Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE:PBI). Columbus Circle Investors has a $77.4 million position in the stock, comprising 0.6% of its 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Iridian Asset Management, managed by David Cohen and Harold Levy, which held a $67.9 million position; the fund has 0.9% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other hedge funds that hold long positions include Boaz Weinstein’s Saba Capital, John Thaler’s JAT Capital Management and Matt McLennan’s First Eagle Investment Management.

Now, certain bigger names have been driving this bullishness. Columbus Circle Investors, managed by Donald Chiboucis, assembled the most outsized position in Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE:PBI). Columbus Circle Investors had 77.4 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. David Cohen and Harold Levy’s Iridian Asset Management also made a $67.9 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Boaz Weinstein’s Saba Capital, John Thaler’s JAT Capital Management, and Matt McLennan’s First Eagle Investment Management.

How have insiders been trading Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE:PBI)?

Bullish insider trading is at its handiest when the company in question has seen transactions within the past half-year. Over the last six-month time frame, Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE:PBI) 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 Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE:PBI). These stocks are Knoll Inc (NYSE:KNL), HNI Corp (NYSE:HNI), Herman Miller, Inc. (NASDAQ:MLHR), Steelcase Inc. (NYSE:SCS), and VeriFone Systems Inc (NYSE:PAY). This group of stocks are the members of the business equipment industry and their market caps resemble PBI’s market cap.

Using the returns explained by the previously mentioned analyses, average investors must always pay attention to hedge fund and insider trading activity, and Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE:PBI) is no exception.

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