Is it smart to be bullish on Silicon Laboratories (NASDAQ:SLAB)?
To the average investor, there are many indicators market participants can use to watch their holdings. A duo of the most under-the-radar are hedge fund and insider trading movement. At Insider Monkey, our research analyses have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best hedge fund managers can trounce the market by a very impressive amount (see just how much).
Just as necessary, optimistic insider trading activity is another way to look at the investments you’re interested in. Just as you’d expect, there are a variety of incentives for a corporate insider to get rid of shares of his or her company, but just one, very clear reason why they would initiate a purchase. Plenty of empirical studies have demonstrated the market-beating potential of this method if you know what to do (learn more here).
Keeping this in mind, it’s important to examine the newest info surrounding Silicon Laboratories (NASDAQ:SLAB).
What does the smart money think about Silicon Laboratories (NASDAQ:SLAB)?
At Q2’s end, a total of 14 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of 0% from the first quarter. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes significantly.
When using filings from the hedgies we track, Alkeon Capital Management, managed by Panayotis Sparaggis, holds the biggest position in Silicon Laboratories (NASDAQ:SLAB). Alkeon Capital Management has a $65.4 million position in the stock, comprising 1.5% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson of Adage Capital Management, with a $64.9 million position; the fund has 0.2% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other peers that are bullish include Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, Clint Carlson’s Carlson Capital and Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies.
Because Silicon Laboratories (NASDAQ:SLAB) has witnessed bearish sentiment from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, we can see that there is a sect of fund managers who sold off their positions entirely at the end of the second quarter. At the top of the heap, John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors sold off the biggest stake of the 450+ funds we key on, worth about $3.3 million in stock, and D. E. Shaw of D E Shaw was right behind this move, as the fund said goodbye to about $2.4 million worth. These moves are intriguing to say the least, as aggregate hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).
How have insiders been trading Silicon Laboratories (NASDAQ:SLAB)?
Insider buying is at its handiest when the company we’re looking at has experienced transactions within the past six months. Over the latest 180-day time period, Silicon Laboratories (NASDAQ:SLAB) has experienced 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 Silicon Laboratories (NASDAQ:SLAB). These stocks are Himax Technologies, Inc. (ADR) (NASDAQ:HIMX), First Solar, Inc. (NASDAQ:FSLR), SolarCity Corp (NASDAQ:SCTY), Cirrus Logic, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRUS), and SunPower Corporation (NASDAQ:SPWR). This group of stocks are the members of the semiconductor – specialized industry and their market caps are similar to SLAB’s market cap.
