Is QUALCOMM, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM) a buy, sell, or hold? Money managers are taking an optimistic view. The number of long hedge fund bets inched up by 3 in recent months.
To the average investor, there are tons of indicators investors can use to track publicly traded companies. A duo of the best are hedge fund and insider trading movement. At Insider Monkey, our research analyses have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the top hedge fund managers can outpace the S&P 500 by a very impressive amount (see just how much).
Equally as integral, positive insider trading sentiment is another way to break down the financial markets. Just as you’d expect, there are a number of incentives for an upper level exec to get rid of shares of his or her company, but only one, very obvious reason why they would buy. Several empirical studies have demonstrated the market-beating potential of this strategy if “monkeys” understand what to do (learn more here).
Keeping this in mind, it’s important to take a look at the latest action encompassing QUALCOMM, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM).
What have hedge funds been doing with QUALCOMM, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM)?
In preparation for this year, a total of 89 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of 3% from the previous quarter. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings meaningfully.
Of the funds we track, Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global had the most valuable position in QUALCOMM, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM), worth close to $708.3 million, comprising 4.9% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Fisher Asset Management, managed by Ken Fisher, which held a $562.7 million position; the fund has 1.6% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other hedgies with similar optimism include Stephen Mandel’s Lone Pine Capital, Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies and Lee Ainslie’s Maverick Capital.
Consequently, some big names were breaking ground themselves. Standard Pacific Capital, managed by Douglas Dillard Jr. and Raj D. Venkatesan, established the biggest position in QUALCOMM, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM). Standard Pacific Capital had 53.4 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital also made a $52 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new QCOM positions are John A. Levin’s Levin Capital Strategies, Michael Messner’s Seminole Capital (Investment Mgmt), and Rob Citrone’s Discovery Capital Management.
What do corporate executives and insiders think about QUALCOMM, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM)?
Insider trading activity, especially when it’s bullish, is most useful when the primary stock in question has seen transactions within the past six months. Over the last 180-day time period, QUALCOMM, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM) has seen zero unique insiders buying, and 16 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).
Let’s go over hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to QUALCOMM, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM). These stocks are Echostar Corporation (NASDAQ:SATS), Harris Corporation (NYSE:HRS), Nokia Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:NOK), Motorola Solutions Inc (NYSE:MSI), and Ericsson (ADR) (NASDAQ:ERIC). This group of stocks are the members of the communication equipment industry and their market caps match QCOM’s market cap.
