Should You Buy Fulton Financial Corp (FULT)?

Is Fulton Financial Corp (NASDAQ:FULT) a good investment?

In the financial world, there are tons of indicators market participants can use to watch Mr. Market. A duo of the most useful 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 elite hedge fund managers can trounce the market by a significant margin (see just how much).

Just as key, bullish insider trading sentiment is a second way to analyze the financial markets. Just as you’d expect, there are many reasons for a bullish insider to sell shares of his or her company, but only one, very obvious reason why they would behave bullishly. Plenty of empirical studies have demonstrated the valuable potential of this strategy if you understand what to do (learn more here).

Thus, let’s analyze the newest info for Fulton Financial Corp (NASDAQ:FULT).

What does the smart money think about Fulton Financial Corp (NASDAQ:FULT)?

At the end of the second quarter, a total of 9 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of 13% from the first quarter. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes meaningfully.

Out of the hedge funds we follow, Dreman Value Management, managed by David Dreman, holds the biggest position in Fulton Financial Corp (NASDAQ:FULT). Dreman Value Management has a $35.7 million position in the stock, comprising 1.1% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Cliff Asness of AQR Capital Management, with a $7.6 million position; less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Some other hedgies that are bullish include Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, Jacob Gottlieb’s Visium Asset Management and Tom Russo’s Gardner Russo & Gardner.

As industrywide interest increased, certain bigger names were breaking ground themselves. Dreman Value Management, managed by David Dreman, initiated the most outsized position in Fulton Financial Corp (NASDAQ:FULT). Dreman Value Management had 35.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management also initiated a $7.6 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new FULT investors: Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, Jacob Gottlieb’s Visium Asset Management, and Tom Russo’s Gardner Russo & Gardner.

What do corporate executives and insiders think about Fulton Financial Corp (NASDAQ:FULT)?

Insider buying is most useful when the company in question has seen transactions within the past half-year. Over the last half-year time frame, Fulton Financial Corp (NASDAQ:FULT) has seen zero unique insiders buying, 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 Fulton Financial Corp (NASDAQ:FULT). These stocks are Signature Bank (NASDAQ:SBNY), National Penn Bancshares (NASDAQ:NPBC), Valley National Bancorp (NYSE:VLY), Webster Financial Corporation (NYSE:WBS), and Susquehanna Bancshares Inc (NASDAQ:SUSQ). All of these stocks are in the regional – northeast banks industry and their market caps resemble FULT’s market cap.