P.H. Glatfelter Company (NYSE:GLT): Insiders Are Dumping, Should You? – Schweitzer-Mauduit International, Inc. (NYSE:SWM), Clearwater Paper Corp (NYSE:CLW)

P.H. Glatfelter Company (NYSE:GLT) was in 12 hedge funds’ portfolio at the end of December. GLT investors should be aware of an increase in enthusiasm from smart money recently. There were 10 hedge funds in our database with GLT positions at the end of the previous quarter.

In the 21st century investor’s toolkit, there are plenty of gauges shareholders can use to watch their holdings. A couple of the most useful are hedge fund and insider trading activity. At Insider Monkey, our studies have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the elite hedge fund managers can trounce their index-focused peers by a solid amount (see just how much).

Equally as key, optimistic insider trading sentiment is another way to parse down the investments you’re interested in. Just as you’d expect, there are plenty of incentives for an insider to cut shares of his or her company, but only one, very simple reason why they would buy. Plenty of empirical studies have demonstrated the market-beating potential of this strategy if you understand where to look (learn more here).

Keeping this in mind, let’s take a look at the key action surrounding P.H. Glatfelter Company (NYSE:GLT).

What does the smart money think about P.H. Glatfelter Company (NYSE:GLT)?

Heading into 2013, a total of 12 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of 20% from the third quarter. With hedge funds’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings considerably.

According to our comprehensive database, Martin Whitman’s Third Avenue Management had the most valuable position in P.H. Glatfelter Company (NYSE:GLT), worth close to $18 million, accounting for 0.4% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Cliff Asness of AQR Capital Management, with a $4 million position; the fund has 0% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other peers with similar optimism include Joel Greenblatt’s Gotham Asset Management, D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw and Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp.

Now, specific money managers were breaking ground themselves. Arrowstreet Capital, managed by Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell, assembled the most valuable position in P.H. Glatfelter Company (NYSE:GLT). Arrowstreet Capital had 1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group also made a $0 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Peter Algert and Kevin Coldiron’s Algert Coldiron Investors and Ken Gray and Steve Walsh’s Bryn Mawr Capital.

Insider trading activity in P.H. Glatfelter Company (NYSE:GLT)

Bullish insider trading is at its handiest when the primary stock in question has seen transactions within the past six months. Over the latest 180-day time frame, P.H. Glatfelter Company (NYSE:GLT) has experienced zero unique insiders buying, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

Let’s go over hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to P.H. Glatfelter Company (NYSE:GLT). These stocks are KapStone Paper and Packaging Corp. (NYSE:KS), Schweitzer-Mauduit International, Inc. (NYSE:SWM), Clearwater Paper Corp (NYSE:CLW), Buckeye Technologies Inc. (NYSE:BKI), and Boise Inc. (NYSE:BZ). This group of stocks belong to the paper & paper products industry and their market caps resemble GLT’s market cap.

With the returns demonstrated by Insider Monkey’s time-tested strategies, everyday investors should always watch hedge fund and insider trading activity, and P.H. Glatfelter Company (NYSE:GLT) shareholders fit into this picture quite nicely.