This Told You To Buy Trina Solar Limited (ADR) (TSL) Last Week Before The Gains. Did You Catch It In Time?

Trina Solar Limited (ADR) (NYSE:TSL) is up almost 60% year-to-date and despite being overshadowed by some of the more well-known solar players like SolarCity or First Solar, a ton of wealthy investors are pooling their money here too. Now, the stock is up another 13.7% today, and there’s one indicator that would have told you to buy ahead of time. We knew about it early, did you?

If you’d ask most stock holders, hedge funds are viewed as slow, old investment tools of yesteryear. While there are greater than 8000 funds trading at present, we look at the bigwigs of this group, around 450 funds. It is estimated that this group oversees most of the hedge fund industry’s total asset base, and by watching their best equity investments, we have unsheathed a number of investment strategies that have historically outstripped the market. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outpaced the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points per year for a decade in our back tests, and since we’ve started sharing our picks with our subscribers at the end of August 2012, we have trumped the S&P 500 index by 33 percentage points in 11 months (check out a sample of our picks).

Equally as integral, bullish insider trading sentiment is a second way to parse down the financial markets. Obviously, there are a number of motivations for an insider to drop shares of his or her company, but just one, very clear reason why they would buy. Various empirical studies have demonstrated the impressive potential of this method if “monkeys” know what to do (learn more here).

Consequently, it’s important to take a look at the recent action encompassing Trina Solar Limited (ADR) (NYSE:TSL).

Hedge fund activity in Trina Solar Limited (ADR) (NYSE:TSL)

At Q1’s end, a total of 9 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of 29% from one quarter earlier. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings substantially.

Of the funds we track, Kerr Neilson’s Platinum Asset Management had the biggest position in Trina Solar Limited (ADR) (NYSE:TSL), worth close to $57.3 million, accounting for 1.1% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Michael Novogratz of Fortress Investment Group, with a $4.2 million position; 0.1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Remaining peers with similar optimism include Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, Scott Fine and Peter Richards’s Empire Capital Management and Himanshu H. Shah’s Shah Capital Management.

Now, some big names were leading the bulls’ herd. Platinum Asset Management, managed by Kerr Neilson, initiated the most valuable position in Trina Solar Limited (ADR) (NYSE:TSL). Platinum Asset Management had 57.3 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Noam Gottesman’s GLG Partners also initiated a $9 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new TSL positions are D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw, Brian Taylor’s Pine River Capital Management, and Michael Novogratz’s Fortress Investment Group.

How are insiders trading Trina Solar Limited (ADR) (NYSE:TSL)?

Insider purchases made by high-level executives is most useful when the company we’re looking at has seen transactions within the past half-year. Over the latest six-month time period, Trina Solar Limited (ADR) (NYSE:TSL) has experienced 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 Trina Solar Limited (ADR) (NYSE:TSL). These stocks are GT Advanced Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:GTAT), Alpha and Omega Semiconductor Ltd (NASDAQ:AOSL), CEVA, Inc. (NASDAQ:CEVA), NVE Corporation (NASDAQ:NVEC), and IXYS Corporation (NASDAQ:IXYS). This group of stocks belong to the semiconductor – specialized industry and their market caps are similar to TSL’s market cap.

With the results demonstrated by the aforementioned research, retail investors should always watch hedge fund and insider trading sentiment, and Trina Solar Limited (ADR) (NYSE:TSL) is an important part of this process.

Click here to learn why you should track hedge funds