This Metric Says You Are Smart to Buy Huron Consulting Group (HURN)

Is Huron Consulting Group (NASDAQ:HURN) going to take off soon? Investors who are in the know are taking an optimistic view. The number of bullish hedge fund bets inched up by 4 in recent months.

At the moment, there are tons of metrics investors can use to watch publicly traded companies. A pair of the most underrated are hedge fund and insider trading activity. At Insider Monkey, our research analyses have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best hedge fund managers can beat the market by a solid amount (see just how much).

Equally as beneficial, positive insider trading activity is a second way to parse down the world of equities. Just as you’d expect, there are plenty of incentives for an upper level exec to drop shares of his or her company, but only one, very simple reason why they would buy. Several academic studies have demonstrated the valuable potential of this strategy if “monkeys” know where to look (learn more here).

With all of this in mind, it’s important to take a glance at the recent action regarding Huron Consulting Group (NASDAQ:HURN).

Hedge fund activity in Huron Consulting Group (NASDAQ:HURN)

Heading into Q2, a total of 13 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of 44% from the first quarter. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings meaningfully.

Of the funds we track, Donald Chiboucis’s Columbus Circle Investors had the largest position in Huron Consulting Group (NASDAQ:HURN), worth close to $17.8 million, comprising 0.1% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Prescott Group Capital Management, managed by Phil Frohlich, which held a $4 million position; the fund has 0.9% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other hedge funds that are bullish include John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management and Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies.

Consequently, key money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Renaissance Technologies, managed by Jim Simons, assembled the largest position in Huron Consulting Group (NASDAQ:HURN). Renaissance Technologies had 0.8 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Mike Vranos’s Ellington also initiated a $0.5 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw, Neil Chriss’s Hutchin Hill Capital, and Joel Greenblatt’s Gotham Asset Management.

Insider trading activity in Huron Consulting Group (NASDAQ:HURN)

Insider buying is at its handiest when the company we’re looking at has experienced transactions within the past half-year. Over the last half-year time frame, Huron Consulting Group (NASDAQ:HURN) has seen zero unique insiders purchasing, and 6 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

Let’s also review hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to Huron Consulting Group (NASDAQ:HURN). These stocks are FTI Consulting, Inc. (NYSE:FCN), Navigant Consulting, Inc. (NYSE:NCI), Exponent, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXPO), Wageworks Inc (NYSE:WAGE), and Accretive Health, Inc. (NYSE:AH). This group of stocks are the members of the management services industry and their market caps resemble HURN’s market cap.