Is Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) the right pick for your portfolio? The smart money is becoming less hopeful. The number of bullish hedge fund positions dropped by 14 in recent months.
If you’d ask most market participants, hedge funds are seen as underperforming, outdated financial vehicles of the past. While there are greater than 8000 funds with their doors open today, we at Insider Monkey hone in on the top tier of this club, close to 450 funds. It is widely believed that this group oversees the majority of the smart money’s total capital, and by monitoring their top equity investments, we have unearthed a number of investment strategies that have historically outpaced the market. 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 began to sharing our picks with our subscribers at the end of August 2012, we have topped the S&P 500 index by 23.3 percentage points in 8 months (see the details here).
Equally as beneficial, positive insider trading activity is a second way to parse down the investments you’re interested in. There are a variety of reasons for a corporate insider to downsize shares of his or her company, but only one, very clear reason why they would behave bullishly. Plenty of academic studies have demonstrated the impressive potential of this method if shareholders know what to do (learn more here).
Keeping this in mind, it’s important to take a peek at the latest action surrounding Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F).
How have hedgies been trading Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F)?
In preparation for this quarter, a total of 47 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of -23% from the previous quarter. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings considerably.
Seeing as Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) has faced a declination in interest from hedge fund managers, it’s easy to see that there exists a select few money managers who were dropping their full holdings last quarter. At the top of the heap, Ken Heebner’s Capital Growth Management sold off the largest stake of the 450+ funds we key on, worth close to $109.8 million in stock.. Sean Cullinan’s fund, Point State Capital, also said goodbye to its stock, about $70.1 million worth. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest was cut by 14 funds last quarter.
What do corporate executives and insiders think about Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F)?
Insider buying is most useful when the company in question has seen transactions within the past six months. Over the last half-year time period, Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) has seen zero unique insiders purchasing, and 13 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).
With the results exhibited by Insider Monkey’s studies, everyday investors must always monitor hedge fund and insider trading activity, and Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) shareholders fit into this picture quite nicely.
