Should You Sell FLIR Systems, Inc. (FLIR)?

What’s a smart FLIR Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:FLIR) investor to do?

To the average investor, there are dozens of gauges investors can use to watch their holdings. A duo of the most underrated are hedge fund and insider trading movement. At Insider Monkey, our studies have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the elite hedge fund managers can trounce the market by a very impressive amount (see just how much).

Just as necessary, bullish insider trading activity is a second way to analyze the investments you’re interested in. Obviously, there are a variety of stimuli for an executive to drop shares of his or her company, but only one, very obvious reason why they would buy. Various empirical studies have demonstrated the market-beating potential of this method if piggybackers know where to look (learn more here).

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s discuss the latest info surrounding FLIR Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:FLIR).

What does the smart money think about FLIR Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:FLIR)?

Heading into Q3, a total of 17 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of 0% from the first quarter. With hedge funds’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings significantly.

Judging by the fact that FLIR Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:FLIR) has witnessed bearish sentiment from the top-tier hedge fund industry, it’s easy to see that there exists a select few funds that decided to sell off their positions entirely at the end of the second quarter. At the top of the heap, Matthew Tewksbury’s Stevens Capital Management dumped the largest investment of all the hedgies we key on, totaling about $3.3 million in stock. Ben Levine, Andrew Manuel and Stefan Renold’s fund, LMR Partners, also cut its stock, about $1.1 million worth. These transactions are important to note, as total hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).

How have insiders been trading FLIR Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:FLIR)?

Legal insider trading, particularly when it’s bullish, is best served when the company in focus has seen transactions within the past half-year. Over the last 180-day time period, FLIR Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:FLIR) has experienced zero unique insiders buying, 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 FLIR Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:FLIR). These stocks are Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc (NYSE:HII), Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:SPR), Hexcel Corporation (NYSE:HXL), Teledyne Technologies Incorporated (NYSE:TDY), and Triumph Group Inc (NYSE:TGI). This group of stocks belong to the aerospace/defense products & services industry and their market caps match FLIR’s market cap.

Using the returns demonstrated by the previously mentioned research, regular investors should always watch hedge fund and insider trading sentiment, and FLIR Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:FLIR) is an important part of this process.

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