Wesco Aircraft Holdings Inc (WAIR): Insiders Aren’t Crazy About It

Wesco Aircraft Holdings Inc (NYSE:WAIR) has experienced a decrease in support from the world’s most elite money managers lately.

To most stock holders, hedge funds are perceived as underperforming, outdated investment tools of yesteryear. While there are over 8000 funds with their doors open today, we choose to focus on the upper echelon of this club, close to 450 funds. It is estimated that this group oversees most of all hedge funds’ total asset base, and by watching their highest performing picks, we have identified a number of investment strategies that have historically outpaced the broader indices. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outpaced the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points annually 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 23.3 percentage points in 8 months (explore the details and some picks here).

Just as beneficial, optimistic insider trading activity is a second way to parse down the stock market universe. Obviously, there are plenty of motivations for a corporate insider to cut shares of his or her company, but only one, very obvious reason why they would buy. Many empirical studies have demonstrated the impressive potential of this tactic if you understand where to look (learn more here).

Consequently, let’s take a peek at the latest action regarding Wesco Aircraft Holdings Inc (NYSE:WAIR).

Hedge fund activity in Wesco Aircraft Holdings Inc (NYSE:WAIR)

In preparation for this quarter, a total of 9 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of 0% from the previous quarter.

Since Wesco Aircraft Holdings Inc (NYSE:WAIR) has experienced falling interest from the smart money, it’s safe to say that there was a specific group of money managers that elected to cut their entire stakes in Q1. Interestingly, Mike Vranos’s Ellington dumped the biggest position of the “upper crust” of funds we watch, worth close to $0.2 million in stock. These moves are important to note, as aggregate hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).

How have insiders been trading Wesco Aircraft Holdings Inc (NYSE:WAIR)?

Insider buying is at its handiest when the company in question has seen transactions within the past 180 days. Over the latest 180-day time period, Wesco Aircraft Holdings Inc (NYSE:WAIR) has seen zero unique insiders purchasing, and 6 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

Let’s also review hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to Wesco Aircraft Holdings Inc (NYSE:WAIR). These stocks are Newport Corporation (NASDAQ:NEWP), Susser Petroleum Partners LP (NYSE:SUSP), RTI International Metals, Inc. (NYSE:RTI), Applied Industrial Technologies (NYSE:AIT), and DXP Enterprises Inc (NASDAQ:DXPE). This group of stocks are in the industrial equipment wholesale industry and their market caps are closest to WAIR’s market cap.

With the returns exhibited by the aforementioned strategies, everyday investors must always keep an eye on hedge fund and insider trading activity, and Wesco Aircraft Holdings Inc (NYSE:WAIR) applies perfectly to this mantra.

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