Is it smart to be bullish on AEGON N.V. (ADR) (NYSE:AEG)?
In the 21st century investor’s toolkit, there are plenty of indicators investors can use to analyze their holdings. Two of the most useful are hedge fund and insider trading interest. At Insider Monkey, our studies have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the top fund managers can trounce the broader indices by a significant margin (see just how much).
Equally as useful, positive insider trading sentiment is another way to look at the marketplace. There are lots of incentives for an executive to cut shares of his or her company, but just one, very obvious reason why they would buy. Many empirical studies have demonstrated the market-beating potential of this method if shareholders know what to do (learn more here).
Keeping this in mind, we’re going to discuss the latest info about AEGON N.V. (ADR) (NYSE:AEG).
Hedge fund activity in AEGON N.V. (ADR) (NYSE:AEG)
At the end of the second quarter, a total of 8 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of 0% from one quarter earlier. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes significantly.
When using filings from the hedgies we track, Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital had the biggest position in AEGON N.V. (ADR) (NYSE:AEG), worth close to $28.1 million, accounting for 0.2% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Himanshu H. Shah of Shah Capital Management, with a $2.7 million position; 2.6% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Remaining hedge funds that hold long positions include Malcolm Fairbairn’s Ascend Capital, John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors and Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies.
Because AEGON N.V. (ADR) (NYSE:AEG) has faced dropping sentiment from upper-tier hedge fund managers, we can see that there was a specific group of money managers that slashed their positions entirely at the end of the second quarter. At the top of the heap, Himanshu H. Shah’s Shah Capital Management dumped the biggest position of all the hedgies we key on, comprising close to $2.5 million in stock. David Costen Haley’s fund, HBK Investments, also sold off its stock, about $0.8 million worth. These moves are important to note, as total hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).
What do corporate executives and insiders think about AEGON N.V. (ADR) (NYSE:AEG)?
Insider buying made by high-level executives is best served when the company we’re looking at has seen transactions within the past half-year. Over the latest half-year time period, AEGON N.V. (ADR) (NYSE:AEG) has seen zero unique insiders purchasing, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).
We’ll check out the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to AEGON N.V. (ADR) (NYSE:AEG). These stocks are Prudential Financial Inc (NYSE:PRU), Manulife Financial Corporation (USA) (NYSE:MFC), Torchmark Corporation (NYSE:TMK), Sun Life Financial Inc. (USA) (NYSE:SLF), and Lincoln National Corporation (NYSE:LNC). All of these stocks are in the life insurance industry and their market caps resemble AEG’s market cap.
