Is TeleTech Holdings, Inc. (TTEC) Going to Burn These Hedge Funds?

In the eyes of many of your fellow readers, hedge funds are viewed as useless, old investment tools of a period lost to current times. Although there are more than 8,000 hedge funds in operation currently, Insider Monkey aim at the elite of this group, about 525 funds. It is widely held that this group controls the lion’s share of the hedge fund industry’s total capital, and by tracking their highest quality equity investments, we’ve unsheathed a few investment strategies that have historically outperformed the broader indices. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outstripped 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 outperformed the S&P 500 index by 33 percentage points in 11 months (find the details here).

Equally as useful, optimistic insider trading sentiment is another way to look at the world of equities. There are lots of reasons for an insider to cut shares of his or her company, but just one, very obvious reason why they would initiate a purchase. Various empirical studies have demonstrated the impressive potential of this method if “monkeys” understand where to look (learn more here).

What’s more, let’s examine the recent info surrounding TeleTech Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTEC).

How have hedgies been trading TeleTech Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTEC)?

At Q2’s end, a total of 11 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of 0% from the previous quarter. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings considerably.

According to our 13F database, Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates had the most valuable position in TeleTech Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTEC), worth close to $18.8 million, accounting for 0.1% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is D. E. Shaw of D E Shaw, with a $2.2 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other hedge funds that hold long positions include John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors, Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group.

Because TeleTech Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTEC) has experienced a fall in interest from upper-tier hedge fund managers, we can see that there exists a select few fund managers who sold off their full holdings heading into Q2. At the top of the heap, Andy Redleaf’s Whitebox Advisors said goodbye to the biggest position of the “upper crust” of funds we key on, totaling an estimated $1 million in stock. Mike Vranos’s fund, Ellington, also dropped its stock, about $0.3 million worth. These moves are important to note, as aggregate hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).

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

Legal insider trading, particularly when it’s bullish, is at its handiest when the company in question has experienced transactions within the past 180 days. Over the last half-year time frame, TeleTech Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTEC) has seen zero unique insiders buying, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

We’ll check out the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to TeleTech Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTEC). These stocks are Infoblox Inc (NYSE:BLOX), Atlas Resource Partners, L.P. (NYSE:ARP), ExlService Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXLS), Quad/Graphics, Inc. (NYSE:QUAD), and NetSpend Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:NTSP). This group of stocks are in the business services industry and their market caps are similar to TTEC’s market cap.

Using the returns shown by our tactics, regular investors should always keep one eye on hedge fund and insider trading sentiment, and TeleTech Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTEC) applies perfectly to this mantra.

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