Xilinx, Inc. (XLNX): Hedge Funds Aren’t Crazy About It, Insider Sentiment Unchanged

In the eyes of many investors, hedge funds are seen as useless, outdated investment vehicles of a forgotten age. Although there are In excess of 8,000 hedge funds trading currently, Insider Monkey looks at the bigwigs of this club, close to 525 funds. It is widely held that this group oversees most of the hedge fund industry’s total assets, and by tracking their highest performing equity investments, we’ve deciphered a number of investment strategies that have historically beaten the market. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outpaced 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 outclassed the S&P 500 index by 33 percentage points in 11 months (see all of our picks from August).

Equally as crucial, optimistic insider trading sentiment is a second way to analyze the world of equities. Just as you’d expect, there are a number of stimuli for an executive to downsize shares of his or her company, but just one, very simple reason why they would initiate a purchase. Several empirical studies have demonstrated the impressive potential of this strategy if piggybackers understand what to do (learn more here).

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s study the recent info for Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX).

How are hedge funds trading Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX)?

At the end of the second quarter, a total of 23 of the hedge funds we track held long positions in this stock, a change of -30% from the previous quarter. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes significantly.

According to our 13F database, Panayotis Sparaggis’s Alkeon Capital Management had the largest position in Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX), worth close to $129.5 million, accounting for 2.9% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Citadel Investment Group, managed by Ken Griffin, which held a $73.4 million position; the fund has 0.1% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other peers that are bullish include Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management and Millennium Management Subsidiary’s Green Arrow Capital Management.

As Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX) has witnessed bearish sentiment from the smart money’s best and brightest, it’s safe to say that there exists a select few money managers who were dropping their full holdings in Q1. Interestingly, Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global sold off the largest investment of the “upper crust” of funds we key on, worth an estimated $103.4 million in stock. Donald Chiboucis’s fund, Columbus Circle Investors, also sold off its stock, about $25 million worth. These transactions are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest fell by 10 funds in Q1.

How have insiders been trading Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX)?

Insider buying is most useful when the company we’re looking at has experienced transactions within the past 180 days. Over the latest 180-day time period, Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX) has seen zero unique insiders buying, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

We’ll also examine the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX). These stocks are IPG Photonics Corporation (NASDAQ:IPGP), Skyworks Solutions Inc (NASDAQ:SWKS), Broadcom Corporation (NASDAQ:BRCM), Marvell Technology Group Ltd. (NASDAQ:MRVL), and Analog Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADI). This group of stocks are in the semiconductor – integrated circuits industry and their market caps resemble XLNX’s market cap.

Using the returns demonstrated by our strategies, average investors should always watch hedge fund and insider trading activity, and Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX) is no exception.

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