Tiffany & Co. (TIF): Insiders and Hedge Funds Are Buying, Should You?

Should luxury-focused investors buy Tiffany & Co. (NYSE:TIF)?

In the 21st century investor’s toolkit, there are tons of indicators shareholders can use to monitor stocks. A couple of the most useful are hedge fund and insider trading movement. At Insider Monkey, our research analyses have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best investment managers can outperform the broader indices by a very impressive margin (see just how much).

Equally as useful, optimistic insider trading activity is another way to look at the investments you’re interested in. Just as you’d expect, there are a number of stimuli for a bullish insider to cut shares of his or her company, but just one, very simple reason why they would buy. Plenty of academic studies have demonstrated the valuable potential of this method if investors understand what to do (learn more here).

Keeping this in mind, we’re going to examine the newest info for Tiffany & Co. (NYSE:TIF).

What have hedge funds been doing with Tiffany & Co. (NYSE:TIF)?

At the end of the second quarter, a total of 29 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of 38% from the previous quarter. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of notable hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes meaningfully.

Out of the hedge funds we follow, Natixis Global Asset Management’s Harris Associates had the most valuable position in Tiffany & Co. (NYSE:TIF), worth close to $399.7 million, accounting for 0.8% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Dan Loeb of Third Point, with a $120.2 million position; the fund has 2.7% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining hedgies that are bullish include Richard Chilton’s Chilton Investment Company, Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates and Anand Parekh’s Alyeska Investment Group.

As industrywide interest increased, specific money managers have been driving this bullishness. Third Point, managed by Dan Loeb, established the most outsized position in Tiffany & Co. (NYSE:TIF). Third Point had 120.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Richard Chilton’s Chilton Investment Company also initiated a $55.4 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new TIF positions are Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates, Anand Parekh’s Alyeska Investment Group, and Donald Chiboucis’s Columbus Circle Investors.

Insider trading activity in Tiffany & Co. (NYSE:TIF)

Legal insider trading, particularly when it’s bullish, is most useful when the primary stock in question has experienced transactions within the past half-year. Over the latest half-year time frame, Tiffany & Co. (NYSE:TIF) has experienced 2 unique insiders buying, and 12 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

We’ll check out the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to Tiffany & Co. (NYSE:TIF). These stocks are Charles & Colvard, Ltd. (NASDAQ:CTHR), Zale Corporation (NYSE:ZLC), Blue Nile Inc (NASDAQ:NILE), Luxottica Group SpA (ADR) (NYSE:LUX), and Signet Jewelers Ltd. (NYSE:SIG). This group of stocks are in the jewelry stores industry and their market caps are closest to TIF’s market cap.