Should Barclays PLC (ADR) (NYSE:BCS) investors track the following data?
If you were to ask many of your peers, hedge funds are perceived as overrated, old investment tools of a forgotten age. Although there are more than 8,000 hedge funds with their doors open in present day, Insider Monkey looks at the moguls of this group, close to 525 funds. It is widely held that this group oversees the majority of the hedge fund industry’s total capital, and by paying attention to their highest quality equity investments, we’ve found a few investment strategies that have historically beaten the market. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy beat the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points annually 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 topped the S&P 500 index by 33 percentage points in 11 months (find the details here).
Equally as necessary, optimistic insider trading activity is another way to analyze the investments you’re interested in. As the old adage goes: there are a number of stimuli for a bullish insider to get rid of shares of his or her company, but only one, very obvious reason why they would initiate a purchase. Various empirical studies have demonstrated the valuable potential of this method if shareholders understand what to do (learn more here).
What’s more, it’s important to study the recent info surrounding Barclays PLC (ADR) (NYSE:BCS).
What have hedge funds been doing with Barclays PLC (ADR) (NYSE:BCS)?
In preparation for the third quarter, a total of 15 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of 15% from one quarter earlier. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes considerably.
Consequently, specific money managers have jumped into Barclays PLC (ADR) (NYSE:BCS) headfirst. Renaissance Technologies, managed by Jim Simons, assembled the most outsized position in Barclays PLC (ADR) (NYSE:BCS). Renaissance Technologies had 9.3 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Malcolm Fairbairn’s Ascend Capital also initiated a $3.9 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are David Dreman’s Dreman Value Management, Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital, and Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management.
Insider trading activity in Barclays PLC (ADR) (NYSE:BCS)
Insider buying made by high-level executives is particularly usable when the primary stock in question has seen transactions within the past half-year. Over the latest six-month time period, Barclays PLC (ADR) (NYSE:BCS) has experienced zero unique insiders buying, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).
We’ll also review the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to Barclays PLC (ADR) (NYSE:BCS). These stocks are Itau Unibanco Holding SA (ADR) (NYSE:ITUB), Banco Santander, S.A. (ADR) (NYSE:SAN), Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc (ADR) (NYSE:RBS), Lloyds Banking Group PLC (ADR) (NYSE:LYG), and UBS AG (USA) (NYSE:UBS). This group of stocks belong to the foreign money center banks industry and their market caps are similar to BCS’s market cap.
| Company Name | # of Hedge Funds | # of Insiders Buying | # of Insiders Selling |
| Itau Unibanco Holding SA (ADR) (NYSE:ITUB) | 22 | 0 | 0 |
| Banco Santander, S.A. (ADR) (NYSE:SAN) | 16 | 0 | 0 |
| Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc (ADR) (NYSE:RBS) | 13 | 0 | 0 |
| Lloyds Banking Group PLC (ADR) (NYSE:LYG) | 6 | 0 | 0 |
| UBS AG (USA) (NYSE:UBS) | 16 | 0 | 0 |
Using the results demonstrated by our research, regular investors should always keep one eye on hedge fund and insider trading sentiment, and Barclays PLC (ADR) (NYSE:BCS) is an important part of this process.
