Is ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP) a buy?
In the eyes of many market players, hedge funds are seen as delayed, outdated investment tools of a forgotten age. Although there are In excess of 8,000 hedge funds with their doors open today, this site looks at the top tier of this club, close to 525 funds. It is assumed that this group controls the lion’s share of all hedge funds’ total capital, and by tracking their highest quality stock picks, we’ve unsheathed a number of investment strategies that have historically outstripped Mr. Market. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outperformed the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points a year for a decade in our back tests, and since we’ve started sharing our picks with our subscribers at the end of August 2012, we have topped the S&P 500 index by 33 percentage points in 11 months (see all of our picks from August).
Equally as necessary, optimistic insider trading activity is a second way to look at the stock market universe. Just as you’d expect, there are plenty of incentives for an upper level exec to get rid of shares of his or her company, but only one, very obvious reason why they would initiate a purchase. Plenty of academic studies have demonstrated the impressive potential of this method if piggybackers know where to look (learn more here).
What’s more, we’re going to study the latest info about ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP).
What does the smart money think about ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP)?
At Q2’s end, a total of 45 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of 18% from the previous quarter. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings considerably.
As aggregate interest spiked, certain money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Berkshire Hathaway, managed by Warren Buffett, established the most outsized position in ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP). Berkshire Hathaway had 1.4595 billion invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Matt McLennan’s First Eagle Investment Management also made a $551.1 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new COP investors: Donald Yacktman’s Yacktman Asset Management, Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies, and Israel Englander’s Millennium Management.
How have insiders been trading ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP)?
Insider buying is at its handiest when the company in question has experienced transactions within the past 180 days. Over the latest six-month time period, ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP) 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 ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP). These stocks are Ecopetrol S.A. (ADR) (NYSE:EC), China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (ADR) (NYSE:SNP), Occidental Petroleum Corporation (NYSE:OXY), Eni SpA (ADR) (NYSE:E), and Statoil ASA (ADR) (NYSE:STO). All of these stocks are in the major integrated oil & gas industry and their market caps are closest to COP’s market cap.
| Company Name | # of Hedge Funds | # of Insiders Buying | # of Insiders Selling |
| Ecopetrol S.A. (ADR) (NYSE:EC) | 4 | 0 | 0 |
| China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (ADR) (NYSE:SNP) | 9 | 0 | 0 |
| Occidental Petroleum Corporation (NYSE:OXY) | 63 | 1 | 1 |
| Eni SpA (ADR) (NYSE:E) | 9 | 0 | 0 |
| Statoil ASA (ADR) (NYSE:STO) | 13 | 0 | 0 |
Using the returns demonstrated by the previously mentioned analyses, regular investors must always keep one eye on hedge fund and insider trading sentiment, and ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP) is an important part of this process.
