Salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM) investors: listen up.
If you were to ask many traders, hedge funds are viewed as bloated, old financial tools of a forgotten age. Although there are In excess of 8,000 hedge funds trading currently, this site aim at the bigwigs of this group, close to 525 funds. Analysts calculate that this group controls the majority of the smart money’s total capital, and by keeping an eye on their best picks, we’ve found a number of investment strategies that have historically beaten the broader indices. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outstripped the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points annually 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 outperformed the S&P 500 index by 33 percentage points in 11 months (see all of our picks from August).
Just as useful, optimistic insider trading activity is a second way to analyze the investments you’re interested in. There are many incentives for an upper level exec to drop shares of his or her company, but only one, very clear reason why they would initiate a purchase. Plenty of academic studies have demonstrated the useful potential of this strategy if investors know what to do (learn more here).
What’s more, let’s study the latest info surrounding salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM).
Hedge fund activity in salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM)
At the end of the second quarter, a total of 45 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of 7% from the first quarter. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of notable hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings substantially.
As aggregate interest spiked, particular hedge funds were breaking ground themselves. HBK Investments, managed by David Costen Haley, created the most outsized position in salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM). HBK Investments had 154.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Lee Ainslie’s Maverick Capital also initiated a $115.3 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new CRM positions are Daniel Gold’s QVT Financial, David Stemerman’s Conatus Capital Management, and Christopher Lord’s Criterion Capital.
What have insiders been doing with salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM)?
Insider buying made by high-level executives is most useful when the primary stock in question has seen transactions within the past half-year. Over the latest half-year time frame, salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM) has seen zero unique insiders purchasing, and 10 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).
We’ll also review the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM). These stocks are Workday Inc (NYSE:WDAY), Catamaran Corp (USA) (NASDAQ:CTRX), CA, Inc. (NASDAQ:CA), Intuit Inc. (NASDAQ:INTU), and Adobe Systems Incorporated (NASDAQ:ADBE). This group of stocks are in the application software industry and their market caps match CRM’s market cap.
| Company Name | # of Hedge Funds | # of Insiders Buying | # of Insiders Selling |
| Workday Inc (NYSE:WDAY) | 28 | 0 | 7 |
| Catamaran Corp (USA) (NASDAQ:CTRX) | 35 | 0 | 0 |
| CA, Inc. (NASDAQ:CA) | 28 | 0 | 4 |
| Intuit Inc. (NASDAQ:INTU) | 32 | 0 | 4 |
| Adobe Systems Incorporated (NASDAQ:ADBE) | 34 | 0 | 9 |
Using the returns shown by our tactics, regular investors must always track hedge fund and insider trading sentiment, and salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM) is an important part of this process.
