What’s a smart Mosaic Co (NYSE:MOS) investor to do?
If you were to ask many investors, hedge funds are perceived as useless, outdated investment tools of an era lost to time. Although there are In excess of 8,000 hedge funds with their doors open today, Insider Monkey looks at the moguls of this group, around 525 funds. It is widely held that this group oversees the lion’s share of the smart money’s total assets, and by monitoring their highest quality equity investments, we’ve unsheathed a few investment strategies that have historically outperformed the S&P 500. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy beat the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points per year for a decade in our back tests, and since we’ve began to sharing our picks with our subscribers at the end of August 2012, we have beaten the S&P 500 index by 33 percentage points in 11 months (explore the details and some picks here).
Equally as crucial, bullish insider trading activity is a second way to analyze the world of equities. As the old adage goes: there are a variety of stimuli for an upper level exec to get rid of shares of his or her company, but just one, very obvious reason why they would initiate a purchase. Various empirical studies have demonstrated the market-beating potential of this strategy if “monkeys” know where to look (learn more here).
Furthermore, let’s examine the newest info surrounding Mosaic Co (NYSE:MOS).
What does the smart money think about Mosaic Co (NYSE:MOS)?
Heading into Q3, a total of 34 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of -13% from the previous quarter. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes significantly.
According to our 13F database, Empyrean Capital Partners, managed by Michael A. Price and Amos Meron, holds the largest position in Mosaic Co (NYSE:MOS). Empyrean Capital Partners has a $215.2 million call position in the stock, comprising 5% of its 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Steven Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors, with a $83 million position; the fund has 0.5% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other hedge funds that hold long positions include Bain Capital’s Brookside Capital, D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw and Mason Hawkins’s Southeastern Asset Management.
Judging by the fact that Mosaic Co (NYSE:MOS) has faced bearish sentiment from the smart money’s best and brightest, it’s easy to see that there were a few funds who sold off their entire stakes at the end of the second quarter. Interestingly, George Soros’s Soros Fund Management dropped the largest stake of the 450+ funds we key on, valued at an estimated $98 million in stock, and Sean Cullinan of Point State Capital was right behind this move, as the fund said goodbye to about $14.1 million worth. These transactions are intriguing to say the least, as total hedge fund interest was cut by 5 funds at the end of the second quarter.
How are insiders trading Mosaic Co (NYSE:MOS)?
Legal insider trading, particularly when it’s bullish, is best served when the primary stock in question has seen transactions within the past 180 days. Over the latest 180-day time period, Mosaic Co (NYSE:MOS) has experienced 1 unique insiders purchasing, and 1 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).
We’ll also examine the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to Mosaic Co (NYSE:MOS). These stocks are Monsanto Company (NYSE:MON), CF Industries Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CF), Agrium Inc. (USA) (NYSE:AGU), Syngenta AG (ADR) (NYSE:SYT), and Potash Corp./Saskatchewan (USA) (NYSE:POT). This group of stocks are in the agricultural chemicals industry and their market caps match MOS’s market cap.
