In the eyes of many of your peers, hedge funds are viewed as delayed, old financial vehicles of an era lost to time. Although there are more than 8,000 hedge funds with their doors open in present day, Insider Monkey aim at the bigwigs of this group, about 525 funds. It is widely held that this group oversees the majority of the smart money’s total capital, and by watching their highest performing investments, we’ve spotted a number of investment strategies that have historically beaten the broader indices. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy beat 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 outpaced the S&P 500 index by 33 percentage points in 11 months (find the details here).
Equally as key, positive insider trading activity is a second way to analyze the financial markets. There are lots of stimuli for an upper level exec to downsize shares of his or her company, but just one, very clear reason why they would buy. Several academic studies have demonstrated the useful potential of this tactic if “monkeys” know where to look (learn more here).
What’s more, let’s study the recent info about Vicor Corp (NASDAQ:VICR).
What have hedge funds been doing with Vicor Corp (NASDAQ:VICR)?
At the end of the second quarter, a total of 5 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of -50% from one quarter earlier. With hedgies’ capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings substantially.
According to our 13F database, Mark Broach’s Manatuck Hill Partners had the largest position in Vicor Corp (NASDAQ:VICR), worth close to $6.6 million, accounting for 0.8% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Renaissance Technologies, managed by Jim Simons, which held a $1.7 million position; less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Some other hedgies that hold long positions include Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates, Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management and John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors.
Judging by the fact that Vicor Corp (NASDAQ:VICR) has experienced dropping sentiment from the top-tier hedge fund industry, it’s easy to see that there exists a select few money managers who sold off their full holdings in Q1. It’s worth mentioning that Edward Goodnow’s Goodnow Investment Group dumped the largest position of the “upper crust” of funds we track, valued at an estimated $2.5 million in stock, and Phil Frohlich of Prescott Group Capital Management was right behind this move, as the fund dumped about $0.9 million worth. These bearish behaviors are important to note, as total hedge fund interest was cut by 5 funds in Q1.
What do corporate executives and insiders think about Vicor Corp (NASDAQ:VICR)?
Bullish insider trading is best served when the company we’re looking at has experienced transactions within the past 180 days. Over the latest six-month time period, Vicor Corp (NASDAQ:VICR) has seen zero unique insiders purchasing, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).
We’ll go over the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to Vicor Corp (NASDAQ:VICR). These stocks are KEMET Corporation (NYSE:KEM), American Superconductor Corporation (NASDAQ:AMSC), Maxwell Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:MXWL), Bel Fuse, Inc. (NASDAQ:BELFB), and Neonode, Inc (NASDAQ:NEON). This group of stocks belong to the diversified electronics industry and their market caps resemble VICR’s market cap.
