Is Ulta Salon, Cosmetics & Fragrance, Inc. (ULTA) Going to Burn These Hedge Funds?

Ulta Salon, Cosmetics & Fragrance, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTA) investors: listen up.

At the moment, there are a multitude of indicators shareholders can use to track publicly traded companies. A duo of the most under-the-radar are hedge fund and insider trading movement. At Insider Monkey, our studies have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the elite hedge fund managers can outclass the broader indices by a significant amount (see just how much).

Just as key, positive insider trading sentiment is a second way to analyze the stock market universe. As the old adage goes: there are many stimuli for a corporate insider to cut shares of his or her company, but just one, very obvious reason why they would behave bullishly. Several academic studies have demonstrated the useful potential of this method if piggybackers know what to do (learn more here).

Thus, it’s important to study the recent info about Ulta Salon, Cosmetics & Fragrance, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTA).

How are hedge funds trading Ulta Salon, Cosmetics & Fragrance, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTA)?

At Q2’s end, a total of 27 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of -34% from the first quarter. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes considerably.

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As Ulta Salon, Cosmetics & Fragrance, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTA) has experienced declining interest from upper-tier hedge fund managers, we can see that there were a few fund managers that decided to sell off their full holdings heading into Q2. Intriguingly, Michael Karsch’s Karsch Capital Management dropped the biggest position of all the hedgies we monitor, totaling close to $81.4 million in stock. Tony Chedraoui’s fund, Tyrus Capital, also cut its stock, about $76.1 million worth. These bearish behaviors are important to note, as total hedge fund interest dropped by 14 funds heading into Q2.

How are insiders trading Ulta Salon, Cosmetics & Fragrance, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTA)?

Insider buying made by high-level executives is most useful when the company in focus has seen transactions within the past six months. Over the last six-month time frame, Ulta Salon, Cosmetics & Fragrance, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTA) has experienced 1 unique insiders buying, and 2 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

We’ll go over the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to Ulta Salon, Cosmetics & Fragrance, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTA). These stocks are VCA Antech Inc (NASDAQ:WOOF), Bright Horizons Family Solutions Inc (NYSE:BFAM), Weight Watchers International, Inc. (NYSE:WTW), H&R Block, Inc. (NYSE:HRB), and Service Corporation International (NYSE:SCI). This group of stocks belong to the personal services industry and their market caps resemble ULTA’s market cap.