Is Waddell & Reed Financial, Inc. (NYSE:WDR) ready to rally soon? Prominent investors are taking an optimistic view. The number of bullish hedge fund bets increased by 3 recently.
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Just as key, optimistic insider trading activity is a second way to break down the stock market universe. Just as you’d expect, there are plenty of incentives for an executive to downsize shares of his or her company, but just one, very obvious reason why they would buy. Several empirical studies have demonstrated the impressive potential of this tactic if piggybackers know where to look (learn more here).
With all of this in mind, we’re going to take a glance at the key action encompassing Waddell & Reed Financial, Inc. (NYSE:WDR).
Hedge fund activity in Waddell & Reed Financial, Inc. (NYSE:WDR)
At the end of the first quarter, a total of 13 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of 30% from the previous quarter. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an “upper tier” of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings substantially.
As aggregate interest increased, some big names were breaking ground themselves. PEAK6 Capital Management, managed by Matthew Hulsizer, assembled the largest call position in Waddell & Reed Financial, Inc. (NYSE:WDR). PEAK6 Capital Management had 1.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp also initiated a $0.3 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new WDR investors: Steven Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors, D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw, and Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management.
What do corporate executives and insiders think about Waddell & Reed Financial, Inc. (NYSE:WDR)?
Insider trading activity, especially when it’s bullish, is particularly usable when the primary stock in question has seen transactions within the past six months. Over the last half-year time period, Waddell & Reed Financial, Inc. (NYSE:WDR) has seen zero unique insiders buying, and 8 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).
Let’s also review hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to Waddell & Reed Financial, Inc. (NYSE:WDR). These stocks are American Capital Ltd. (NASDAQ:ACAS), Lazard Ltd (NYSE:LAZ), Legg Mason, Inc. (NYSE:LM), Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC (NYSE:OZM), and KKR & Co. L.P. (NYSE:KKR). This group of stocks are in the asset management industry and their market caps resemble WDR’s market cap.