Acxiom Corporation (NASDAQ:ACXM) investors should be aware of an increase in hedge fund sentiment recently.
In the eyes of most shareholders, hedge funds are perceived as underperforming, old financial vehicles of yesteryear. While there are over 8000 funds with their doors open at present, we choose to focus on the moguls of this club, about 450 funds. It is widely believed that this group oversees most of the hedge fund industry’s total asset base, and by tracking their highest performing stock picks, we have discovered a few investment strategies that have historically outperformed the broader indices. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy beat the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points a year for a decade in our back tests, and since we’ve began to sharing our picks with our subscribers at the end of August 2012, we have outpaced the S&P 500 index by 25 percentage points in 6.5 month (see all of our picks from August).
Just as integral, bullish insider trading activity is a second way to break down the financial markets. As the old adage goes: there are a number of stimuli for an insider to downsize shares of his or her company, but just one, very simple reason why they would behave bullishly. Plenty of academic studies have demonstrated the useful potential of this tactic if piggybackers know where to look (learn more here).
Keeping this in mind, let’s take a look at the recent action encompassing Acxiom Corporation (NASDAQ:ACXM).
How have hedgies been trading Acxiom Corporation (NASDAQ:ACXM)?
In preparation for this year, a total of 17 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of 42% from the third quarter. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings significantly.
Of the funds we track, Mariko Gordon’s Daruma Asset Management had the most valuable position in Acxiom Corporation (NASDAQ:ACXM), worth close to $62 million, accounting for 3.7% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Ken Griffin of Citadel Investment Group, with a $28 million position; the fund has 0% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other hedge funds that hold long positions include D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw, Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies and Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital.
As aggregate interest increased, key money managers were breaking ground themselves. Millennium Management, managed by Israel Englander, created the most outsized position in Acxiom Corporation (NASDAQ:ACXM). Millennium Management had 2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Glenn Russell Dubin’s Highbridge Capital Management also initiated a $1 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new ACXM positions are David Costen Haley’s HBK Investments, Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp, and Mike Vranos’s Ellington.
What have insiders been doing with Acxiom Corporation (NASDAQ:ACXM)?
Bullish insider trading is most useful when the primary stock in question has experienced transactions within the past 180 days. Over the last 180-day time frame, Acxiom Corporation (NASDAQ:ACXM) has experienced 1 unique insiders purchasing, and 1 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).
With the returns shown by the aforementioned research, retail investors must always pay attention to hedge fund and insider trading activity, and Acxiom Corporation (NASDAQ:ACXM) applies perfectly to this mantra.
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Insider Monkey’s small-cap strategy returned 29.2% between September 2012 and February 2013 versus 8.7% for the S&P 500 index. Try it now by clicking the link above.
