What Hedge Funds Think About ANSYS, Inc. (ANSS)

Now, according to many investors, hedge funds are assumed to be bloated, old financial vehicles of a forgotten age. Although there are over 8,000 hedge funds trading in present day, this site looks at the crème de la crème of this club, around 525 funds. It is assumed that this group oversees the majority of the hedge fund industry’s total assets, and by monitoring their highest quality equity investments, we’ve unsheathed a number of investment strategies that have historically outperformed Mr. Market. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outstripped 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 outclassed the S&P 500 index by 33 percentage points in 11 months (explore the details and some picks here).

Equally as key, optimistic insider trading activity is a second way to analyze the financial markets. Obviously, there are lots of motivations for an upper level exec to downsize shares of his or her company, but just one, very clear reason why they would buy. Various academic studies have demonstrated the useful potential of this method if investors know what to do (learn more here).

Now that that’s out of the way, we’re going to analyze the newest info surrounding ANSYS, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANSS).

What have hedge funds been doing with ANSYS, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANSS)?

Heading into Q3, a total of 12 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of 0% from the first quarter. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings considerably.

According to our 13F database, Royce & Associates, managed by Chuck Royce, holds the biggest position in ANSYS, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANSS). Royce & Associates has a $50.7 million position in the stock, comprising 0.2% of its 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Sandler Capital Management, managed by Andrew Sandler, which held a $22.8 million position; the fund has 0.9% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other peers that hold long positions include James A. Noonan’s Pivot Point Capital, Van Schreiber’s Bennett Lawrence Management and Charles Akre’s Akre Capital Management.

Since ANSYS, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANSS) has witnessed a fall in interest from upper-tier hedge fund managers, logic holds that there exists a select few money managers that decided to sell off their positions entirely last quarter. At the top of the heap, Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management sold off the largest stake of all the hedgies we key on, totaling about $0.5 million in call options.. Mark A. Nordlicht’s fund, Platinum Management, also said goodbye to its call options., about $0 million worth. These transactions are interesting, as total hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).

Insider trading activity in ANSYS, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANSS)

Legal insider trading, particularly when it’s bullish, is most useful when the primary stock in question has seen transactions within the past six months. Over the latest 180-day time frame, ANSYS, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANSS) has seen zero unique insiders buying, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

We’ll check out the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to ANSYS, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANSS). These stocks are Mentor Graphics Corp (NASDAQ:MENT), PTC Inc (NASDAQ:PMTC), Concur Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:CNQR), National Instruments Corp (NASDAQ:NATI), and Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK). This group of stocks are the members of the technical & system software industry and their market caps are similar to ANSS’s market cap.

Using the results demonstrated by the previously mentioned strategies, regular investors should always watch hedge fund and insider trading activity, and ANSYS, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANSS) applies perfectly to this mantra.

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