M&T Bank Corporation (MTB): Are Hedge Funds Right About This Stock?

Now, according to many of your peers, hedge funds are perceived as useless, outdated investment tools of an era lost to time. Although there are more than 8,000 hedge funds in operation currently, this site focuses on the aristocrats of this group, around 525 funds. It is widely held that this group has its hands on most of the hedge fund industry’s total capital, and by keeping an eye on their highest performing investments, we’ve identified a number of investment strategies that have historically outpaced the broader indices. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outperformed 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 (see all of our picks from August).

Just as crucial, optimistic insider trading activity is another way to look at the financial markets. Obviously, there are lots of incentives for an upper level exec to cut shares of his or her company, but just one, very obvious reason why they would buy. Plenty of academic studies have demonstrated the market-beating potential of this tactic if investors know where to look (learn more here).

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s examine the newest info about M&T Bank Corporation (NYSE:MTB).

What does the smart money think about M&T Bank Corporation (NYSE:MTB)?

In preparation for the third quarter, a total of 28 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of 22% from one quarter earlier. With hedgies’ capital changing hands, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes considerably.

As industrywide interest increased, certain bigger names have jumped into M&T Bank Corporation (NYSE:MTB) headfirst. Berkshire Hathaway, managed by Warren Buffett, initiated the most valuable position in M&T Bank Corporation (NYSE:MTB). Berkshire Hathaway had 601.4 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies also made a $74.6 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new MTB positions are John Paulson’s Paulson & Co, Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management, and Mario Gabelli’s GAMCO Investors.

How have insiders been trading M&T Bank Corporation (NYSE:MTB)?

Insider buying made by high-level executives is best served when the primary stock in question has seen transactions within the past 180 days. Over the latest half-year time period, M&T Bank Corporation (NYSE:MTB) has experienced zero unique insiders purchasing, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

We’ll also take a look at the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to M&T Bank Corporation (NYSE:MTB). These stocks are Valley National Bancorp (NYSE:VLY), Webster Financial Corporation (NYSE:WBS), Susquehanna Bancshares Inc (NASDAQ:SUSQ), Fulton Financial Corp (NASDAQ:FULT), and Signature Bank (NASDAQ:SBNY). All of these stocks are in the regional – northeast banks industry and their market caps are similar to MTB’s market cap.

Using the results explained by Insider Monkey’s studies, average investors must always watch hedge fund and insider trading sentiment, and M&T Bank Corporation (NYSE:MTB) applies perfectly to this mantra.

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