In today’s marketplace, there are tons of gauges investors can use to watch the equity markets. Some of the most innovative are hedge fund and insider trading sentiment. At Insider Monkey, our studies have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the elite investment managers can outperform the S&P 500 by a significant margin (see just how much).
Equally as necessary, positive insider trading sentiment is a second way to look at the financial markets. Just as you’d expect, there are plenty of stimuli for a corporate insider to sell shares of his or her company, but only one, very clear reason why they would buy. Plenty of empirical studies have demonstrated the market-beating potential of this method if you understand where to look (learn more here).
Keeping this in mind, let’s discuss the recent info about Quiksilver, Inc. (NYSE:ZQK).
What does the smart money think about Quiksilver, Inc. (NYSE:ZQK)?
At Q2’s end, a total of 12 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of 0% from the previous quarter. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes considerably.
According to our 13F database, Royce & Associates, managed by Chuck Royce, holds the largest position in Quiksilver, Inc. (NYSE:ZQK). Royce & Associates has a $12.6 million position in the stock, comprising less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Miura Global Management, managed by Pasco Alfaro / Richard Tumure, which held a $7.9 million position; the fund has 1% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other peers that hold long positions include Lisa Rapuano’s Lane Five Capital, Scott Sinclair and Laurence Chang’s Cascabel Management and Bruce Kovner’s Caxton Associates LP.
As Quiksilver, Inc. (NYSE:ZQK) has witnessed bearish sentiment from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, we can see that there exists a select few money managers that decided to sell off their positions entirely last quarter. Intriguingly, Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies cut the biggest position of the 450+ funds we key on, worth an estimated $6.1 million in stock. Peter Rathjens Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s fund, Arrowstreet Capital, also said goodbye to its stock, about $2.7 million worth. These moves are intriguing to say the least, as aggregate hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).
Insider trading activity in Quiksilver, Inc. (NYSE:ZQK)
Insider buying made by high-level executives is at its handiest when the company in question has experienced transactions within the past half-year. Over the latest half-year time period, Quiksilver, Inc. (NYSE:ZQK) has seen zero unique insiders buying, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).
We’ll also review the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to Quiksilver, Inc. (NYSE:ZQK). These stocks are Columbia Sportswear Company (NASDAQ:COLM), UniFirst Corp (NYSE:UNF), True Religion Apparel, Inc. (NASDAQ:TRLG), G-III Apparel Group, Ltd. (NASDAQ:GIII), and Oxford Industries, Inc. (NYSE:OXM). This group of stocks are the members of the textile – apparel clothing industry and their market caps match ZQK’s market cap.