In the eyes of many traders, hedge funds are seen as bloated, outdated investment vehicles of an era lost to time. Although there are over 8,000 hedge funds trading today, this site aim at the elite of this club, about 525 funds. It is assumed that this group controls the lion’s share of the hedge fund industry’s total capital, and by tracking their highest quality equity investments, we’ve discovered a few investment strategies that have historically beaten the broader indices. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outstripped the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points a year 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 beaten the S&P 500 index by 33 percentage points in 11 months (find a sample of our picks).
Just as necessary, positive insider trading sentiment is another way to look at the world of equities. Obviously, there are lots of motivations for an executive to drop shares of his or her company, but just one, very simple reason why they would behave bullishly. Several academic studies have demonstrated the useful potential of this tactic if investors know where to look (learn more here).
Keeping this in mind, we’re going to examine the recent info for ViewPoint Financial Group (NASDAQ:VPFG).
How have hedgies been trading ViewPoint Financial Group (NASDAQ:VPFG)?
At the end of the second quarter, a total of 5 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of -44% from the previous quarter. With hedge funds’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes substantially.
According to our 13F database, Renaissance Technologies, managed by Jim Simons, holds the most valuable position in ViewPoint Financial Group (NASDAQ:VPFG). Renaissance Technologies has a $15.6 million position in the stock, comprising less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Cliff Asness of AQR Capital Management, with a $4.2 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other hedgies that are bullish include Mike Vranos’s Ellington, John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors and Israel Englander’s Millennium Management.
As ViewPoint Financial Group (NASDAQ:VPFG) has witnessed dropping sentiment from the top-tier hedge fund industry, it’s safe to say that there was a specific group of funds who were dropping their full holdings at the end of the second quarter. At the top of the heap, Joseph A. Jolson’s Harvest Capital Strategies said goodbye to the largest position of the “upper crust” of funds we watch, totaling about $1.9 million in stock, and Matthew Tewksbury of Stevens Capital Management was right behind this move, as the fund dropped about $1.1 million worth. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as total hedge fund interest dropped by 4 funds at the end of the second quarter.
What do corporate executives and insiders think about ViewPoint Financial Group (NASDAQ:VPFG)?
Legal insider trading, particularly when it’s bullish, is most useful when the primary stock in question has experienced transactions within the past 180 days. Over the last half-year time period, ViewPoint Financial Group (NASDAQ:VPFG) has seen zero unique insiders buying, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).
We’ll go over the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to ViewPoint Financial Group (NASDAQ:VPFG). These stocks are Main Street Capital Corporation (NYSE:MAIN), Solar Capital Ltd. (NASDAQ:SLRC), Tile Shop Hldgs, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTS), Sabine Royalty Trust (NYSE:SBR), and Dorchester Minerals LP (NASDAQ:DMLP). This group of stocks belong to the diversified investments industry and their market caps are similar to VPFG’s market cap.
