This Metric Says You Are Smart to Sell The Wendy’s Company (WEN)

Is The Wendy’s Company (NASDAQ:WEN) an exceptional stock to buy now? Money managers are getting less bullish. The number of long hedge fund bets decreased by 1 recently.

At the moment, there are a multitude of indicators market participants can use to track the equity markets. A couple of the most innovative are hedge fund and insider trading activity. At Insider Monkey, our research analyses have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the best fund managers can trounce the broader indices by a very impressive amount (see just how much).

Just as integral, bullish insider trading sentiment is a second way to parse down the marketplace. Just as you’d expect, there are a number of motivations for a bullish insider to downsize shares of his or her company, but just one, very simple reason why they would initiate a purchase. Various academic studies have demonstrated the valuable potential of this strategy if “monkeys” understand what to do (learn more here).

Keeping this in mind, we’re going to take a glance at the latest action surrounding The Wendy’s Company (NASDAQ:WEN).

How have hedgies been trading The Wendy’s Company (NASDAQ:WEN)?

Heading into Q2, a total of 15 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of -6% from the first quarter.

Seeing as The Wendy’s Company (NASDAQ:WEN) has experienced a declination in interest from the aggregate hedge fund industry, it’s safe to say that there exists a select few fund managers that slashed their full holdings in Q1. Intriguingly, Murray Stahl’s Horizon Asset Management dropped the biggest stake of the 450+ funds we key on, comprising about $60.6 million in stock.. Cliff Asness’s fund, AQR Capital Management, also dumped its stock, about $1.2 million worth. These moves are intriguing to say the least, as aggregate hedge fund interest fell by 1 funds in Q1.

How have insiders been trading The Wendy’s Company (NASDAQ:WEN)?

Insider buying is most useful when the primary stock in question has seen transactions within the past six months. Over the last 180-day time frame, The Wendy’s Company (NASDAQ:WEN) has seen zero unique insiders purchasing, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

Let’s check out hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to The Wendy’s Company (NASDAQ:WEN). These stocks are Arcos Dorados Holding Inc (NYSE:ARCO), Brinker International, Inc. (NYSE:EAT), Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. (NASDAQ:CBRL), The Cheesecake Factory Incorporated (NASDAQ:CAKE), and Bloomin’ Brands Inc (NASDAQ:BLMN). This group of stocks are in the restaurants industry and their market caps are closest to WEN’s market cap.

With the returns shown by Insider Monkey’s strategies, everyday investors should always monitor hedge fund and insider trading sentiment, and The Wendy’s Company (NASDAQ:WEN) is an important part of this process.

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