This Metric Says You Are Smart to Buy Motorola Solutions Inc (MSI)

Is Motorola Solutions Inc (NYSE:MSI) an excellent stock to buy now? The smart money is getting more optimistic. The number of bullish hedge fund bets advanced by 1 recently.

At the moment, there are dozens of metrics shareholders can use to track publicly traded companies. A couple of the best are hedge fund and insider trading sentiment. At Insider Monkey, our research analyses have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the top money managers can outclass their index-focused peers by a very impressive margin (see just how much).

Equally as integral, optimistic insider trading activity is a second way to parse down the investments you’re interested in. Obviously, there are lots of reasons for a corporate insider to cut shares of his or her company, but just one, very obvious reason why they would buy. Many empirical studies have demonstrated the market-beating potential of this tactic if “monkeys” know where to look (learn more here).

Consequently, it’s important to take a gander at the latest action encompassing Motorola Solutions Inc (NYSE:MSI).

What have hedge funds been doing with Motorola Solutions Inc (NYSE:MSI)?

At Q1’s end, a total of 39 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of 3% from the previous quarter. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings meaningfully.

When looking at the hedgies we track, Jeffrey Ubben’s ValueAct Capital had the largest position in Motorola Solutions Inc (NYSE:MSI), worth close to $1.851 billion, comprising 20.9% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by David Cohen and Harold Levy of Iridian Asset Management, with a $268.4 million position; the fund has 3.9% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other hedge funds that are bullish include Jeffrey Tannenbaum’s Fir Tree, Chase Coleman and Feroz Dewan’s Tiger Global Management LLC and John Shapiro’s Chieftain Capital.

As industrywide interest jumped, key hedge funds have been driving this bullishness. Viking Global, managed by Andreas Halvorsen, initiated the biggest position in Motorola Solutions Inc (NYSE:MSI). Viking Global had 110.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw also initiated a $6.4 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new MSI investors: Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies, Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates, and Charles Davidson’s Wexford Capital.

Insider trading activity in Motorola Solutions Inc (NYSE:MSI)

Insider buying is at its handiest when the company in focus has experienced transactions within the past 180 days. Over the latest six-month time frame, Motorola Solutions Inc (NYSE:MSI) has experienced zero unique insiders purchasing, and 6 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

Let’s check out hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to Motorola Solutions Inc (NYSE:MSI). These stocks are JDS Uniphase Corp (NASDAQ:JDSU), Echostar Corporation (NASDAQ:SATS), Harris Corporation (NYSE:HRS), Ericsson (ADR) (NASDAQ:ERIC), and Nokia Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:NOK). This group of stocks are the members of the communication equipment industry and their market caps match MSI’s market cap.